aV- 






N^^'' "^^r 



'^if- ^^^ 



•^A v^' 



''^- .<Vv^ 






./ .»?? 



■lV 



^. o^^ 









xV ^: 



x^^ % 



'V .^\ 









^,. v^' 









.^^^ 



A^^' % 









P/- >"^ 






.■•^^ 



"<', v-^^ 






■ f. 









^. ' . ^6. 









% 


4 










v^^ 


% 








_ 


-^^' 


_- 


•.v*r^ 






* 


,o 


•< ''/ , ' 


. "■ 






c^^ .- 


^^V'%^ 


' ' -^'^ 




"c 


0^ 




^-^ "^ 


/ 


o 


^^' 


■"^e.. 






;>^ 




'■^ . 


■-a 




° ' ', 



















A 






"^^ 


/^ 










r 






,*-* % 

,*:.,.„> 








.^'' 


^ 








% 


' 


■^o 


o'^ 


<" 





















.0^ 






\^' 












VIEWS OF 
EARLY NEW YORK 



VIEWS 

OF 

EARLY NEW YORK 

WITH ILLUSTRATIVE SKETCHES 

PREPARED FOR THE 

NEW YORK CHAPTER OF THE 

COLONIAL ORDER OF 

THE ACORN 




NEW YORK 

PRIVATELY PRINTED 

MCMIV 



.Cll 



LIBRARY nf CONGRESS 
Two OoDles Seceived 

JUN 17 1904 

, .Cooyrleht Entry 

CLASS /? XXc. No. 



Copyright, 1904, by 

The New York Chapter of the 

Colonial Order of the Acorx 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



New York in 1650 . Fordham Morris . . . 11 

DutchlnfluenceinNew ) ,,^.„, „ „ __, 

, y William Cary ii anger . . 27 

Oranje Boven . . . William Gordon Ver planch 51 

New York in 1733 . William Loring Andrews . 89 

New York before the ) ^^ ^ ^ 77 n • 1 •« 1 

xr r Henry Axtell Prince . .111 
Revolutionary War ) 

New York in 1801 . William Gilbert Dames . 133 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 




ume. 



HE annual banquets of the 
Colonial Order for six years 
from 1896 to 1901 were ren- 
dered notable by the presenta- 
tion to the members and their 
guests of the series of views 
of old New York which are 
included in the present vol- 
These views were selected with care, and 
graphically represent the gradual growth of the 
city from the little Dutch trading-post, situated 
at the Batterj^ to the more important city de- 
picted in Rollinson's view of 1801. 

The committee having this work in charge was 
fortunate in securing the services of Mr. Edwin 
Davis French, who has faithfully reproduced on 
copper all of the features of the original prints, 
and it is confidently believed that in no other 

[7] 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

single volume can so many representative views 
of the city be obtained. 

At a meeting of the Colonial Order, held about 
two years ago, action was taken to appoint a 
committee under whose care articles should be 
prepared, descriptive of the city at the periods 
rej)resented by these views, to be issued with the 
prints in a volume which should be a permanent 
witness to one of the objects for which the Colo- 
nial Order was founded. After the usual delay, 
that in such matters seems inevitable, the articles 
have been finished, and the present volume is the 
result. 

It is hoped that the careful researches made 
by the writers will throw new light on the social 
and political conditions of the city in its early 
stages of development, and that those interested 
in early New York will be glad to welcome a 
new volume on their favorite topic. It only re- 
mains to thank the gentlemen who have so care- 
fully undertaken the by no means easy task of 
preparing these articles, and to bespeak for them 
the kindly indulgence of the courteous reader. 

New York, April, 1904. 



VIEWS OF 
EARLY NEW YORK 




NEW YORK IN 1650 





^^8^ 


^^^ 

^(s^^^ 

W^m 


1 



HE simple little picture before 
us originally appeared in a 
book of travels concerning 
America (author unknown), 
printed at Cologne in 1648. 
A copy of the book is in the 
New York Historical Society 
library, bound up with various 
other Holland pamphlets. 

The next and better-known issue is at the foot 
of a folded map in Adriaen Vanderdonck's " De- 
scription or Prospectus of New Netherland," 
printed in Amsterdam in 1650. 

Our engraver, Mr. French, has faithfully re- 
produced the original. To be consistent, the let- 
terpress should be dated 1648 ; but the date on the 

[11] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

letterpress adopted by our society was, in view 
of all the circumstances, a safe one to insert. 

The unknown artist is supposed to be sitting on 
the deck of a vessel in the Hudson River or on 
Ellis Island, with his back to the New Jersey 
shore, while he sketches the south end of Manhat- 
tan Island and Brooklyn Heights. 

The writer of this notice is limited in his duty. 
He confines his description to this print of 1648- 
1650; others will take up the thread of the narra- 
tive where the picture ceases to recall events per- 
tinent to or after its date ; and we therefore invoke 
a part of the motto of our order and " Look Back- 
ward " upon events which made it possible for a 
city to be located where the artist has sketched it. 

The picture represents in the center a headland 
with a fort. The flag over the fort is supposed 
to be in thi-ee colors. Five Indian canoes, three 
European ships, a pinnace, a yawl, and some 
scattered houses near the fort tell of European 
and aboriginal inhabitants. The map on which 
we found the sketch reproduced tells us that the 
headland is part of an island called Manhattes, 
which forms a portion of a newly discovered coun- 
try in the Western Hemisphere called New Ne- 
therlands. It was first seen by Europeans in 
September, 1609, from the deck of a Dutch ship 
called the Half Moon, commanded by an Eng- 

[12] 



NEW YORK IN 1650 

lishman, one Henry Hudson. The voyage was 
made for the purpose of discovering a shorter 
passage to the far East, so that Hollanders might 
find an " open door " to China, in spite of the 
Pope's bull, which gave to the Portuguese the 
monopoly of the route by the Cape of Good 
Hope. 

Let us enlarge upon the picture before us and 
imagine ourselves standing alongside the good 
skipper Henry Hudson on the deck of the Half 
Moon as she sailed up our beautiful bay on that 
fine autumnal morning. The hills of Manliattan 
and New Jersey over the bow, Staten Island to 
port, Long Island to starboard, are clothed with 
the "forest primeval"; the maples are just be- 
ginning to turn, showing bright tints of red and 
yellow; the somber browns of oak, chestnut, and 
elm, and the dark green of cedar and pine, bring 
out the brighter hues of the maple foliage, while 
the almost Indian summer atmosphere (there was 
a slight mist that morning) half obscures and then 
again reveals the towering Palisades, as the white 
American sunlight bums through the haze. No 
wonder the gallant captain is enthusiastic over 
his landfall, and tells us "it is as fair a land as 
ever was trodden by the foot of man." ^ 

* Henry Hudson: Hakluyt Society Collection. So-called 
Hudson's Journal. 

[13] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

The discoveiy of the site of a city which after- 
ward becomes famous is an event inspiring great 
interest. Tradition, mythology, religion itself, 
recall and celebrate those Early Foundings; every 
language tells the story about them ; but no more 
eventful period had ever existed in the world's 
history than when our city's site was found. 

A few weeks before the Half Moon sailed 
from Old Amsterdam, Philip III of Spain, 
grandson of Emperor Charles V, had recognized 
the United Provinces of the Old Netherlands as 
free and independent states. A truce for twelve 
years had been agreed upon between Spain and 
the Low Countries. In this same year a site was 
found for the New Amsterdam in the New Ne- 
therlands. The United States to-day is the New 
World power, just as little Holland in 1609 be- 
gan its career as an Old World power. 

Bancroft says: " America owes her origin not 
to dynasties, but to the genius of commerce and 
corporations." 

The Dutch East India Company, intelligent 
private adventurers, and the Dutch West India 
Company discovered, established, and for thirty- 
five years maintained this little '' acorn " of a city, 
which has developed into a mighty oak.^ 

Slight assistance was given it by the Holland 

' The crest of the Colonial Order is an acorn. 
[14] 



NEW YORK IN 1650 

government, mostly by parchment and sealing- 
wax in the shape of licenses and charters. Not 
until 1623 did their High INIightinesses of Hol- 
land give anything so formal as a charter, and 
before that time only licenses to trade, perhaps 
a few soldiers and cannon, were furnished, the set- 
tlers and private capital paying most of the ex- 
penses.^ 

We have some written evidence of these small 
Dutch beginnings. In those early records, and 
by the light of contemporaneous European his- 
tory, we also read between the lines that the set- 
tlement at Manhattan was becoming an object of 
envy to other nationalities; personal and com- 
mercial rivalry existed between the various capi- 
talists in Holland who furnished the money for 
the ships, and a very evident disinclination to 
assume responsibility prevailed on the part of the 
Dutch government; for Holland's foreign policy 
had suddenly become very important : Barneveldt, 
the Grand Pensionary, and others of the conserva- 
tive party, feared that the truce with Spain might 
be violated by irresponsible ship-masters : perhaps 
the eager searchers after furs might not be too 
particular about boundary lines between other 
settlements in the Western World, over which the 
good friends of Holland, Henry of Navarre and 

* N. Y. Colonial Documents, I, pages 3 to 10 et supra. 
[15] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

James I of England, claimed jurisdiction. It is 
therefore very plain that to the hardy, brave ad- 
venturers themselves, worthy descendants of the 
" Sea Beggars " who had succeeded in winning 
liberty from the Spanish yoke, belongs the credit 
and glorj^ of founding New York,— not to their 
High Mightinesses of Holland. 

The beginning, with such scant governmental 
aid, was unsystematic, irresponsible. For nearly 
fourteen years after the discovery there was no 
general system of law; it was a " place of call " 
for the cargoes of furs which were brought down 
from the upper Hudson or upon the various 
sounds and estuaries by the Indians in their ca- 
noes, just as we see them in the picture before 
us; rival adventurers, not always from Holland,^ 
visited the harbor and rivers, and made friends 
with the aborigines, and but little information was 
given by those who retui*ned home to their neigh- 
bors in Holland concerning the boundaries, re- 
sources, or routes of travel in the newly discovered 
territory. Mariners who had visited the place pe- 
titioned the home government to enjoin printers 
from publishing their charts, and, unlike the emi- 
grants to New England, the persons resorting to 
the place made no "solemn league and covenant " 

^ See the case of the William of London. N. Y. Colonial 
Documents, I. 

[16] 



NEW YORK IN 1650 

among themselves for their government, as they 
were but sojourners under licenses which expired 
after four voyages, with no assurance of renewals. 
Neither in those early days was any encourage- 
ment given to the development of agriculture, and 
it may with truth be said that there was nothing 
but the traffic in furs which bound the people to 
the soil; probably ship's discipline was the only 
law known to any of the parties who resorted 
here. 

The secrets of the good land-locked harbor, its 
many contributing rivers, estuaries, and sounds, 
its wealth in furs, could not long remain to the 
few; other Netherlanders coveted the gains of 
the first adventurers, the licenses covering land 
and sea between several degrees of latitude (40° 
to 45°) afforded grand opportunities for Hol- 
landers to prey upon the rich argosies of Spain, 
their perpetual enemy, and the record shows the 
strange spectacle of the Hollanders petitioning 
their government not to make a lasting peace, for 
the game of war on Spanish galleons would be 
spoiled. So the miregulated but rather profitable 
voyages continued; in 1621 the truce with Spain 
was over, the war began again, and the value of 
the fur-trading station was enhanced by the op- 
portunities it afforded for fitting out expedi- 
tions against the Spanish galleons and the West 

[17] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

Indies. In 1623 the home government had 
granted the charter of the Dutch West India 
Company. Some permanent settlement had com- 
menced before that date, and the inhabitants were 
then, as now, cosmopohtan. Dutch from various 
provinces in Holland; one Swede we know of, 
Jonas Bronx, whose name is perpetuated in the 
northern borough of Greater New York; Wal- 
loons—the first child born in the neighborhood 
came of parents of that nationality, bearing in 
this new land the appropriate name of De For- 
est; refugee French, Protestant Germans, and 
here and there an interloping Scotchman or 
Englishman; in fact, the English who had set- 
tled at Leyden, in Holland, and afterward 
founded the Plymouth Colony, had feasted their 
longing eyes on the Figurative Chart of New 
Netherlands, which was made about 1616,^ and 
asked the Holland authorities for permission 
to use it; and one of the earliest accounts of 
the settlement of the Manhattoes has been pre- 
served in Governor Bradford's letter from Ply- 
mouth, dated about 1625. A fair chronicle of 
voyages to Manhattan could be made up from the 
ancient records. The Half Moon made another 
trip in 1610-11. In 1612 Christiansen cmised off 

' Constructed probably from notes of Christiansen and Blok, 
See infra. 

[18] 



NEW YORK IN 1650 

Sandy Hook on a return voyage from the West 
Indies to Holland, taking on board two savages, 
whom he called Valentine and Orson, and exhibit- 
ing them to the people of Holland. A few 
months later we find him asking for permission 
to trade here, and soon after he, in the Fortune, 
and Adriaen Blok, in the Tiger, must have sailed 
across the waters we see in the picture. The For- 
tune sailed up the Hudson and started the fur- 
trade on a firmer basis at Albany; there the fort 
called Nassau was built; Blok's ship, the Tiger, 
remained at the Manliattoes and was burned, 
probably at her anchorage off the point of the 
island shown in the sketch. The shipwrecked 
skipper and his crew spent the winter on the isl- 
and, and erected the fii'st white man's habita- 
tion, supposed to be where Broadway now runs 
near Exchange Place. There the small sloop 
Onrust, or Restless, was built, forty-four and one 
half feet long, eleven and one half feet beam, 
and of sixteen tons' measurement, — just large 
enough, were she now in existence, to be admitted 
into the smallest class of vessels which fly the 
burgee of the New York Yacht Club.^ 

* N. Y. Colonial Documents, I, 50, 53, 59, and see the Figurative 
map bound in with these documents. It faces page 13, Vol. I, N. Y. 
Colonial Documents, and accompanied a petition dated 1616. In 
the writer's opinion it is not an unreasonable conjecture that this 
chart was the one the English refugees at Leyden asked for when 

[19] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

Christiansen not appearing, the shipwrecked 
captain and crew sailed away in their cockleshell 
of a sloop through Hell Gate, passed the Step- 
ping Stones, saw from the Middle Ground the 
red liills we now call New Haven, skirted " Long 
Island's sandy shore," and, finally, hove in sight 
of the high bluffs of the island which has ever 
since been called after the brave Captain Blok. 
Luckily for these fu*st ciTiisers on Long Island 
Sound, the Fortune appeared, the vessels changed 
skippers, Blok took the Fortune to Holland, 
probably mth the notes on boai'd for the Figura- 
tive map or chart, and Christiansen returned to 
the Manhattoes in the good little sloop which 
was afterward to navigate the Delaware on an- 
other voyage of discovery. Surely our print is 
worth looking at, when we see before us the scene 
of the first ship-building enterprise in New York, 
recalling also the discovery of Long Island Sound 
and Delaware River. • 

But other nations watched the growing com- 
merce at the confluence of Hudson River and 
Long Island Sound. The recital of one instance, 
though there were several, must suffice in the 
space allotted to this article. It was a notable 

they were planning their emigration which resulted in the May- 
flower settlement at Plymouth in 1620. 
For this cruise of the Restless see also Brodhead, Vol. I. 

[20] 



NEW YORK IN 1650 

visit by the English in 1614-15, commanded by- 
Captain Samuel Argall, a character familiar in 
the history of Virginia. Argall was returning 
from his memorable cruise to Mount Desert, 
where he had broken up the Jesuit settlement at 
North East Harbor. He put in at Hudson 
River. He found there " four houses and a pre- 
tended Dutch governor/^ and at once demanded 
that the Hollanders should submit themselves to 
the King of England and the govermnent of 
Virginia. Placing Argall's ship on the waters 
shown in our picture, and taking Parkman's 
description of her as she appeared elsewhere, this 
visit presents a most thrilling scene. His ship, 
with all sails set, drums beating, trumpets blow- 
ing, the red flag of England flying, sails close to 
the settlement. We can imagine the haughty 
cavalier from the high poop of his caravel com- 
manding Christiansen and his handful of sailors, 
standing on shore, to come aboard and give an 
account of themselves. Down goes the Dutch 
flag, and upon the staff is hoisted the ensign of 
England, for his Majesty King James I had de- 
clared that this land was in the limits of Virginia, 
and Argall was nephew of the president of the 
Virginia Company. The wary Christiansen 
wisely complied, and, thanks to his prudence and 
Argall's "impetuosity," the English went no fur- 

[21] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

ther and sailed away. A fourteen-gun ship fully 
equipped might easily have gone further up the 
river, conquering all before it, and discovered re- 
sources which were far better than the " Virginia 
lowlands " or Maine's rocky shores; thus was the 
permanent occupation by the British postponed 
for several years. Historians differ as to this 
episode, but it seems to the ^vriter that such an 
event did occur. Argall, the abductor of Poca- 
hontas, the despoiler of a French ship during a 
time of peace between France and England, re- 
lated to the president of the Virginia Company, 
always audacious and aftei*>vard knighted by the 
sovereign of England, would not have hesitated 
to commit another breach of international law 
against an humble Dutch captain and his few 
companions, who then had no cannon, no fort, and 
only four houses on the island.^ But the records 
go on to show that Argall and his ship were 
hardly beyond the Narrows when Christiansen 
lowered the British flag, and the orange, white, 
and blue of the United Provinces again flew from 
the mast.^ He then set to work to build the fort 

* Compare Fiske's " Old Virginia and her Neighbors," Vol. I, 
page 171. Argall's Journal, in Purchas, IV, 1762. Brodhead, Vol. 
I, page 154. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., I, 334; II, 326. "Pioneers of 
France " liy Parkman, page 308. 

^ Colors of the house of Orange, which the " Beggars of the Sea " 
adopted as the flag of the provinces in rebellion against Spain, in- 

[22] 



NEW YORK IN 1650 

we see in the picture. Its date is probably 1615 
or 1616. 

It was an earthwork, for we learn that after 
Stuyvesant's arrival a fence Avas built about it so 
as to prevent the cattle from grazing on its slopes 
and destroying the ramparts.^ 

Christiansen, whom we may by courtesy call 
the first governor, seems to have returned to Hol- 
land, and as the Grand Pensioner Barneveldt, 
who during his lifetime seemed to hinder the 
granting of any charter, had for political reasons 
been executed, this was no longer opposed. The 
charter of the West India Company, with its 
privileges and exemptions, took effect in 1623. 
It did not give the desired relief. It was the 
erection of a licensed monopoly which in its turn, 
except on the island before us, had power to grant 
to favored persons large tracts of land, creating 
a " landed oligarchy " in the interior, the inevit- 
able result of which was continued disputes 

stead of the Burgimdian colors, and so continued until, by request 
of the Dutch Republic, Henry of Navarre conferred the colors of 
France, red, white, and blue, since then the colors of Holland. 
" The Flag of the United States and other Flags," Preble, page 98. 
The red, white, and blue was adopted in 1650 (see Brodhead, " His- 
tory of New York," Vol. I, page 19), but at the time of the build- 
ing of the fort, and even at Stuyvesant's accession, the colors were 
orange, white, and blue, orange on top — oranje boven. 

^Documents relating to New Amsterdam: Ordinances. 
Brodliead, Vol. I, page 48. 

[23] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

between the patroons and the company, for the 
director-general had authority, but very little 
power in men and money to enforce it. English 
vessels also came to trade and were driven away; 
in turn, Dutch vessels laden with cargoes from 
New Amsterdam en route to Holland were seized 
by the English government for trading in Eng- 
lish territory without a license: even in one in- 
stance, the ship Eendracht, with an ex-director- 
general on board, was seized in an English poii;.^ 

Yet some good came of the charter. It encour- 
aged agriculture, and settlers came, planted their 
farms, and raised children. The company, to be 
just to the Indians, forbade the taking of lands 
from the Indians without paying for them, and 
set the example by buying the island of Man- 
hattan for sixty guilders, or twenty-four dollars. 

But controversies were long and weary. Van- 
derdonck, after much trouble, even imprisonment 
for a short time in Holland, succeeded in getting 
the concession of a sort of representative govern- 
ment, which some call the first charter of the city 
of New York; but, judging from the colonial 
Dutch records, we fear that the old halls in the 
Binnenhof at The Hague echoed with the com- 
plaints of the tyranny of the directors -general. 
Government by company and company's ser- 

' N. Y. Colonial Documents, I, pages 45, 46, 47 et supra. 
[24] 



NEW YORK IN 1650 

vants has never, in any country, been successful, 
and we are all familiar with the chapter of griev- 
ances written by Vanderdonck, the only lawyer 
who was permitted in the settlement. One pe- 
tition in 1638 gives a sad picture which is not 
pleasant to recite, yet truth should be told: it 
said the population " does not increase as it 
ought," — it was decreasing, and the West India 
Company was neglecting the settlement; the in- 
habitants of other colonies belonging to foreign 
princes and potentates were endeavoring to in- 
corporate New Netherlands into their jurisdic- 
tions, and if the people and the government in the 
old country did not see that it was " reasoiiahly at- 
tended to " it would be at once entirely overrun. 

Such was the condition of the settlement in 
1647 when Stuyvesant, a strong-willed, well- 
meaning, ill-supported, loyal and brave director- 
general, was sent by the company to take charge 
of affairs. He found the orange, white, and blue 
flag still flying over the ill-kempt fort, the In- 
dians not in very good subjection, considerable 
dissatisfaction among the inhabitants, and 
strangers encroaching on the borders; a dark 
cloud rested on the settlement; however, it had a 
silver lining. We leave the future to be described 
by other pictures and other pens. 

In leaving our little town to its fate, with its 

[25] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

fort and ships and Indians, we invoke, however, 
the other part of the motto of our Colonial Order. 
In " Looking Backward " we are " Looking For- 
ward," the events of the past we refer to were not 
all mistakes, and from those events we draw an 
experience which enables us to prophesy that this 
little town we see in the picture is the beginning 
of a great free city, surpassing in magnitude and 
importance old Amsterdam; here wealth, com- 
merce, art, literature, charity, good will to all 
comers from every clime, will have its sway ; ships 
from every nation may with impunity fly their 
ensigns in its harbors; its river, where we see the 
canoes with Indians, will have mingled with its 
waters those of the great inland lakes; the rail- 
ways will begin here and end on the far Pacific; 
the true Northwest Passage which old Henry 
Hudson was searching for has been found; the 
city's rivers are to be spanned by aerial bridges 
under which ships with topmasts higher than those 
of the Half Moon can sail without any draw- 
openings, and underneath the beds of their deep 
channels tunnels will be built through which thou- 
sands of people and argosies of freight will be 
moved to the waiting fleets of the world ; and yet 
the old tale of Holland is not forgotten, for the 
way of our city "is in the sea, and her paths are in 
many waters" 

[26] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN 
NEW YORK 




TANDiNG in the Parliament 
Square, London, and looking 
at Westminster Abbey, the 
past of the kingdom seems to 
speak from the building which 
embodies so many associations 
and traditions of the kingly 
rulers and peoples who have 
builded the British Empire of to-day. The dust 
of kings and queens rests within its walls; sol- 
diers, statesmen, writers, representatives of all 
the classes which have contributed to England's 
greatness, have their monuments here; and, since 
the time of Edward I, every sovereign of Eng- 
land has been crowned within its walls. And 
then, as one turns to the Houses of Parliament, 

[27] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

the stately building seems to typify the power 
of the empire resting upon the combination of 
representative and hereditary strength which has 
given this constitutional monarchy its influence 
on the destinies of the world. 

Just in front of the Houses of Parliament and 
facing Westminster Abbey is the statue of a man 
who, with others, killed a king, overthrew the 
monarchy, abolished the House of Lords, and, 
disregarding traditions, precedents, and laws, 
governed England by the power of his individual 
greatness and the strength of his army, and made 
the might of England dreaded by all her foes, 
and respected everywhere. 

If, at first thought, tliis statue of Cromwell 
seems incongruous, and the action of the House 
of Lords in protesting against its erection appears 
natural, it comes over one that Lord Rosebery 
saw more clearly than his associates in the Upper 
House when, at the unveiling of the statue, he 
said : " We are all, I imagine, glad, not to say 
proud, to be here to-night " ; for Cromwell led 
a great movement, which, notwithstanding its 
excesses, meant much in the development of 
modern England, and meant more in the found- 
ing and upbuilding of our own nation. 

Strangely enough, this ultra-Protestant ruler 
waged war against the only powerful Protestant 

[28] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

people in Europe, and Dutch and English fought 
for the supremacy of the sea. 

Hume, in his " History of England," sets 
forth the reasons, as he understood them, for the 
war between the Commonwealth and Holland, 
and they seem of sufficient interest to warrant 
the following quotation: 

The movements of great states are often directed 
by as slender springs as those of individuals. Though 
war with so considerable a naval power as the Dutch, 
who were in peace with all their own neighbors, might 
seem dangerous to the yet unsettled commonwealth, tliere 
were several motives which, at this time, induced the 
English parliament to embrace hostile measures. Many 
of the members thought that a foreign war would serve 
as a pretence for continuing the same parliament, and 
delaying the new model of a representative with which 
the nation had so long been flattered. Others hoped 
that the war would furnish a reason for maintaining, 
some time longer, that numerous standing army which 
was so much complained of. On the other hand, some 
who dreaded the increasing power of Cromwell expected 
that the great expense of naval armaments would prove 
a motive for diminishing the military establishment. 
To divert the attention of the public from domestic 
quarrels toward foreign transactions seemed, in the 
present disposition of men's minds, to be good policy. 
The superior power of the English commonwealth, to- 
gether with its advantages of situation, promised sue- 

[29] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

cess ; and the parliamentary leaders hoped to gain many 
rich prizes from the Dutch, to distress and sink their 
flourishing commerce, and, by their victories, to throw 
a lustre on their own establishment, which was so new 
and unpopular. All these views, enforced by the violent 
spirit of St. John, who had great influence over Crom- 
well, determined the parliament to change the purposed 
alliance into a furious war against the United Provinces. 

Cromwell was not content with fighting the 
Dutch in the Old World ; he decided to carry the 
war into the New World. He notified the colonial 
governors in New England that he would send 
a fleet to America, " and he called upon them to 
give their utmost assistance for gaining tlie Man- 
hattans and other places under the power of the 
Dutch." Four armed vessels were despatched 
across the Atlantic to New England, where their 
commanders were to confer with the New Eng- 
land governors regarding the attack upon the 
Dutch. The instructions given by Secretary 
Thurlow were as follows : 

Being come to the Manhattoes, you shall, by surprise, 
open force, or otherwise, endeavor to take the place. 
You have power to give them quarter in case it be ren- 
dered upon summons without opposition. If the Lord 
give his blessing you shall not use cruelty to the in- 
habitants, but encourage those who are willing to remain 

[30] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

under the English flag, and give hberty to others to 
transport themselves to Europe. 

When Governor Stuyvesant was informed of 
the proposed attack, with his usual energy he be- 
gan his preparations for defense. Seventy men 
were enlisted and the supplies necessary for a 
siege were collected. The New England col- 
onies responded favorably to the appeal for as- 
sistance against the Dutch, and Connecticut 
promised two hundred men, and Plymouth or- 
dered fifty men into the service, giving the com- 
mand to Captain Miles Standish and Captain 
Thomas Willett. Massachusetts consented to the 
enrolment of five hundred volunteers. Plymouth 
qualified its action by the statement that " we 
concur in hostile measures against our ancient 
Dutch enemies, only in reference unto the na- 
tional quarrel." 

Before the fleet sailed from Boston news was 
received that peace had been concluded between 
England and Holland, and further hostilities 
were in consequence abandoned. 

It was natural and right that this war should 
terminate, and, in 1654, peace was signed by 
Cromwell, who had then been invested with the 
dignity of Protector, and a defensive league was 
made between the two republics. 
• [31] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

Cromwell died, and with him perished the fab- 
ric of his personal rule; for, like Frederick the 
Great and Napoleon, he had builded, not on broad 
principles, but on personal force and ability, 
which he could not leave in their might and power 
to any successor; so, after his son's short negative 
rule, the Stuarts came back in 1660. 

In 1664 the Commons passed a vote that 

the wrongs, disasters, and indignities offered to the Eng- 
lish by the subjects of the United Provinces were the 
greatest obstruction to all foreign trade, and they prom- 
ised to assist the King with their lives and fortunes in 
asserting the rights of his Crown against all opposi- 
tion whatever. 

Hume, in speaking of this action, continues as 
follows : 

This was the first open step towards the Dutch war. 
We must explain the cause and motives of this measure. 

That close union and confederacy which, during a 
course of near seventy years, has subsisted, almost with- 
out Interruption or jealousy, between England and 
Holland, Is not so much founded on the natural, unal- 
terable Interests of these states, as on their terror of the 
growing power of the French monarch, who, without 
their combination, it Is apprehended, would soon extend 
his dominion over Europe. In the first years of Charles' 
reign, when the ambitious genius of Lewis had not, as 

[32] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

yet, displayed itself, and when the great force of the 
people was in some measure unknown, even to themselves, 
the rivalship of commerce, not checked by any other 
jealousy or apprehension, had, in England, begotten 
a violent enmity against the neighboring republic. 

Trade was beginning among the English to be a mat- 
ter of general concern; but, notwithstanding all their 
efforts and advantages, their commerce seemed hitherto 
to stand upon a footing which was somewhat precarious. 
The Dutch, who, by industry and frugality, were able 
to undersell them in every market, retained possession of 
the most lucrative branches of commerce; and the Eng- 
lish merchants had the mortification to find that all 
attempts to extend their trade were still turned, by the 
vigilance of their rivals, to their loss and dishonor. 
Their indignation increased when they considered the 
superior naval power of England; the bravery of her 
officers and seamen, her favorable situation, which en- 
abled her to intercept the whole Dutch commerce. By 
the prospect of these advantages, they were strongly 
prompted, from motives less just than political, to 
make war upon the States ; and at once to ravish from 
them by force what they could not obtain, or could ob- 
tain but slowly, by superior skill and industry. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the two coun- 
tries were still at peace, Charles II, in 1664, 
granted to the Duke of York all the territories 
between the Connecticut River and Delaware 
Bay, being practically a grant of New Nether- 

[33] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

lands; in April of the same year four vessels, 
under the command of Robert Nicolls, with three 
hundred and fifty soldiers, sailed for New Eng- 
land, and in the month of August the fleet entered 
the Narrows. In deference to the entreaties of 
the people, Stuyvesant, who personally was dis- 
posed to fight, surrendered to Nicolls. For this 
act Stuyvesant was severely criticized, and was 
called to The Hague to explain his conduct; but 
his action has been deemed by the most careful 
students of that time to have been a practical ne- 
cessity in view of the certain defeat of the Dutch 
had hostilities been commenced. In 1673 the 
Dutch recaptured the city, but by the treaty of 
Westminster, signed in 1674, it was agreed that 
England and Holland should return to each other 
the conquests made during hostilities, and in ac- 
cordance with this provision New Netherlands 
was again transferred to English rule, its name 
was changed, and since that time it has been 
known to the world as New York. 

The Dutch generally accepted Colonel Nic- 
olls's rule. Two militia companies were organized, 
the officers of which were among the distinguished 
Dutch citizens who accepted their commissions 
from Colonel NicoUs. Nicolls undoubtedly com- 
manded the respect of the Dutch, and after four 
years' service as governor was succeeded by Colo- 

[34] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

nel Francis Lovelace, who for five years, until 
1683, held the position with benefit to all con- 
cerned. Peace and quiet marked these years. 

In the year 1671, Charles II had for eleven 
years been King of England, and the austere life 
of the Puritan rulers had given way to the laxity 
of the Stuart covirt. The King, affable and witty 
and indolent, tried in secret to undermine the 
power of Parliament. Apparently caring no- 
thing for business, his time given up to pleasure, 
he was steadily striving to make himself inde- 
pendent of Parliament. He treated the most 
serious subjects with levity; when the Duke of 
York told him of plots against his life, he laugh- 
ingly replied: " They will never kill me to make 
you king " ; and on his death-bed he apologized 
to those around for being such an unconscionable 
time in dying; but beneath his frivolity ran the 
strong undercurrent of the wish for the power 
of an absolute monarch. " A king," he thought, 
" who might be checked, and have his ministers 
called to an account, was but a king in name " ; 
and bribe and flattery were freely used where they 
could be made effective. Louise la Querouaille 
had been created Duchess of Portsmouth, and 
the influence of the French court, though secret, 
was powerful in England. Louis XIV was, as 
Green says, the avowed " champion of Catholi- 

[35] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

cism and despotism against civil and religious 
liberty throughout the world " ; and Charles was 
willing to make almost any terms with Louis if 
he could secure in return the money which would 
make him independent. In 1670, he and his sis- 
ter, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, made a secret 
treaty at Dover, as the result of the King's offer 
to declare himself a Catholic and join France in 
an attack on Holland, if Louis would " grant 
him a subsidy equal to a million a year." The 
secret treaty, among other things, provided that, 
if necessary, Charles should have a French army 
sent over to him. 

The picture of the life at court, with its decep- 
tions, its falseness, its lack of honor, presents the 
strongest possible contrast with the simple lives 
and earnest work of the men who had founded 
and were developing the colonies in North Amer- 
ica. Occasionally some one in America, like 
Governor Berkeley of Virginia, tried to block 
progress, as when he said: " There are no free 
schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not 
have, these hundred years; for learning has 
brought disobedience and heresy and sects into 
the world, and printing has divulged them, and 
libels against the best government. God keep us 
from both! " But in the main the schools were 
laying the broad foundations of public intelli- 

[36] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

gence ; while churches were simply and faithfully 
helping men to be strong and good. The spirit 
which actuated the Puritans, a spirit sometimes 
narrow but always earnest, a spirit which pro- 
tested, perhaps sometimes too forcefully, against 
the pleasures of the world, but with indomitable 
energy against its excesses and extravagances, 
permeated the men and women of New England ; 
while in New Amsterdam, notwithstanding the 
mingling of races which then, as now, was one 
of its marked characteristics, the stui'dy, honest 
spirit of the Dutch, the spirit of the men who 
prefeiTcd death by the sword or starvation or 
drowning to acceptance of the Spanish rule, 
helped powerfully to form the character of the 
people. 

The early days of the settlement on the island 
of Manhattan were not its golden age. In 1654 
pirates and robbers infested the shores of Long 
Island, treating with great cruelty the unprotected 
inliabitants. The rule of Governor Kieft was in- 
tensely unsatisfactory, and there were many mis- 
understandings between the burghers and Kief t's 
successor, the brave, honest, and impetuous Stuy- 
vesant. One of the most extraordinary traits in 
Stuyvesant's character was his intolerance in re- 
ligious matters and his bitterness toward the 
Quakers. His treatment of the Quaker Hodg- 

[37] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

son was inexplicably severe; beside being fined 
and imprisoned, Hodgson was chained to a wheel- 
barrow and whipped by a negro, and, later, he 
was hung up by his hands and again whipped. 

Stuyvesant felt that he was the source of all 
power and authority, and when Jacob Corlear 
opened a school without Stuyvesant's permission, 
it was promptly closed. His treatment of the 
Indians was not above criticism. In one of the 
unfortunate wars some of the Indian captives 
were sent as slaves to the island of Curasao. 

In England and on the Continent there was 
a desire to know more about the new lands beyond 
the seas, and in the year 1671 there was published 
at Amsterdam a description of America by Jacob 
van Meurs, plate-cutter and book-binder. The 
book was published in Dutch, and the title-page 
bears the following description of the work : 

The new and unknown World, or Description of 
America and the South Land; containing the origin of 
the Americans and the Southlandcrs ; remarkable travels 
thither, situation of the continental coasts, islands, 
towns, fortified places, villages, temples, mountains, 
fountains, streams, houses, the sort of animals, trees, 
plants and strange herbs, religion and manners, re- 
markable events, ancient and moder;i wars, ornamented 
with figures taken from life in America, and described 
by Arnoldus Montanus. 

[38] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

Below this there is a figure of a woman with 
two faces, one looking to the right and one to the 
left, suggesting the Respice Prospice of the 
Colonial Order. In her right hand she holds a 
mirror and in her left five snakes, and her foot 
rests upon a prostrate figure. Beneath the pic- 
ture are the words Invidke Prudentia Victrioc. 
Then follow the words, " At Amsterdam by Ja- 
cob Meurs, book-binder and plate-cutter." 

In the same year there was published in Lon- 
don a book in which the illustrations were made 
from the same plates as were used in the book by 
Montanus just referred to. The title-page of 
this English book is as follows: 

America: Being the Latest, and most Accurate De- 
scription of the New World, containing the Original of 
the Inhabitants and the Remarkable Voyages thither. 
The conquest of the vast Empires of Mexico and Peru, 
and other large Provinces and Territories, with the sev- 
eral European Plantations in those parts. Also their 
Cities, Fortresses, Towns, Temples, Mountains and 
Rivers. Their Habits, Customs, Manners and Religions. 
Their Plants, Beasts, Birds and Serpents. With an 
Appendix, containing, besides several other considerable 
additions, a brief Survey of what hath been discover'd 
of the Unknown South-Land and the Arctick Region. 
Collected from most Authentick Authors, Augmented 
with later Observations and adorned with Maps and 

[39] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

Sculptures by John Ogilby, Esq; His Majesty's Printer 
and Master of the Revels, of Ireland. London. Printed 
by the Author and are to be had at his House in White 
Fryers, M.DC.LXXI. 

It appears to be impossible to determine with 
absolute certainty what relation these two publica- 
tions bore to each other. Mr. William Loring 
Andrews, in his interesting book " New Amster- 
dam, New Orange, New York," says that the 
English publication "is a plagiarism (probably 
authorized) of the work of Montanus," and he 
speaks of it as " Ogilby's clumsy folio volume." 
The experts in the Congressional Library, how- 
ever, state that it is a matter of surmise as to 
what were the relations between the publishers of 
the two books or the terms upon which the use of 
the plates was secured. They also state that it 
has not yet been proved whether the plates were 
originally made by Meurs and afterward secured 
by Ogilby, or the reverse ; but the inference is per- 
haps a safe one that JMeurs was the engraver by 
whom the plates were executed, although there 
is no evidence establishing conclusively the fact 
that he engraved the illustrations for this work. 
Comparatively little is known about him. He 
was born at Amsterdam. The date of his birth 
is uncertain, but his work was done between the 

[40] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

years 1648 and 1671. He was a painter, drafts- 
man, engraver, and publisher. He engraved 
frontispieces and other decorative work for j)ub- 
lishers, and title-pages and illustrations. He also 
engraved portraits; in a list furnished by the 
chief of the print division of the Congressional 
Library, the following eleven portraits are at- 
tributed to him: 

1. Nicholaus Copernicus, astronomer. 

2. Charles II, King of Great Britain (after Van 

Dyck). 

3. Sibrandus Franciscus Eydelschemius (after S. 

Faber). 

4. Georgius Calixtus. 

5. Heinrich von Diest. 

6. Sibylla van Griethuysen. 

7. Andreas Rivetus, 1650. 

8. Carolus D. G. Anglie, Scotiae et Hiberniae, Rex. 

9. Samuel Meresius Picardus, SS. 

10. Rombout Hogerbeets, 1648. 

11. Tycho Brahe. 

This list does not include the portraits in the 
Montanus and Ogilby folios, and in the German 
translation. 

The only portrait which bears his name is that 
of Tycho Brahe. 

In the year 1673 there was published at Am- 

[41] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

sterdam a German translation of the work by 
Montanus. The title-page bears the name of 
Jacob van Meurs, and this would indicate that the 
German publication was made in accordance with 
an arrangement effected with Meurs, who pub- 
lished the Montanus work; the same plates were 
used for the German publication. 

The plate which is the subject of this article 
appears on page 124 of the book by Montanus 
referred to above. 

In the Ogilby folio the following description 
of New York accompanies this plate: 

Now begins New Netherland to lose the Name, for His 
Majesty having conferr'd by Patent upon His Royal 
Highness the Duke of York and Albany, all the acqui- 
sitions made upon Foreigners, together with Long- 
Island, the West end whereof was early settled and 
peopled by Dutch-men ; His Royal Highness impowered, 
by Commission as his Deputy-Governor, Colonel Nicols, 
Groom of his Bed-chamber, to take the Charge and Di- 
rection of Reducing and Governing all those Territories ; 
it was by him thought fit, to change some principal de- 
nominations of Places, viz.. New Netherland into York- 
shire; New Amsterdam into New York; Fort Amscel 
into Fort James; Fort Orange into Fort Albany; and 
withal, to change Burgomasters, Schepen, and Schout, 
into Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriff, with Justices of the 
Peace ; so that all the Civil Policy is conformable to the 

[42] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

Methods and Practice of England, whereas New Eng- 
land retains only the name of Constable in their whole 
Rolls of Civil Officers. 

It is placed upon the neck of the Island Manhatans, 
looking towards the Sea; encompass'd with Hudson's 
River which is Six Miles broad; the town is compact 
and oval, with very fair streets and several good Houses ; 
the rest are built much after the manner of Holland, to 
the number of about four hundred Houses, which in 
those parts are held considerable: Upon one side of the 
Town is James-Fort, capable to lodge three hundred 
Souldiers and officers ; it hath four Bastions ; forty 
Pieces of Cannon mounted; the walls of Stone, lin'd 
with a thick Rampart of Earth; well accommodated 
with a Spring of fresh Water, always furnished with 
Arms and Ammunition, against Accidents : Distant from 
the Sea seven Leagues, it affords a safe entrance, even 
to unskilful Pilots; under the Town side. Ships of any 
Burthen may Ride secure against any Storms, the Cur- 
rent of the River being broken by the interposition of a 
small Island, which lies a Mile distant from the Town. 

About ten Miles from New York is a Place call'd Hell- 
Gate, which being a narrow Passage, there runneth a 
violent Stream both upon Flood and Ebb; and in the 
middle lie some Rocky Islands which the Current sets 
so violently upon that it threatens present Shipwrack; 
and upon the Flood is a large Whirlwind, which contin- 
ually sends forth a hideous roaring, enough to affright 
any Stranger from passing farther, and to wait for some 
Charon to conduct him through; yet to those who are 

[43] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

well acquainted, little or no danger: It is a place of 
great Defence against any Enemy coming in that way, 
which a small Fortification would absolutely prevent, 
and necessitate them to come in at the West end of Long 
Island by Sandy Hook, where Nutten Island forces 
them within the Command of the Fort at New York, 
which is one of the best pieces of Defence in the North 
parts of America. It is built most of brick and Stone, 
and coverr'd with red and black Tyle, and the Land 
being high, it gives at a distance a pleasing prospect 
to the Spectators. The Inhabitants consist most of Eng- 
lish and Dutch, and have a considerable trade with In- 
dians for Beaver, Otter and Rackoon-Skins, with other 
Furrs: as also for Bear, Deer and Elke-Skins; and are 
supply'd with Venison and Fowl in the Winter, and Fish 
in the Summer by the Indians, which they buy at an 
easie Rate; and having the countrey round about them, 
they are continually furnish'd with all such Provisions 
as are needful for the life of Man not only by the 
English and Dutch within their own but likewise by the 
adjacent Colonies. 

The church which appears in the picture was 
begun under somewhat interesting circumstances. 
The energetic De Vries told Governor Kieft that 
a church should be built, and he contributed one 
hundred guilders for the purpose. Kieft prom- 
ised one thousand guilders in behalf of the West 
India Company, and at the wedding-feast of 
a daughter of Domine Bogardus, " after the 

[44 ] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

fourth or fifth round of drinking," a subscription 
hst was produced and generous amounts were 
promptly placed upon it by the guests. In the 
front wall of the church there was a stone with 
the inscription: "Anno Domini 1642, William 
Kieft, Director-General, Hath the Commonalty 
built this Temple." Worship was carried on here 
until 1693, after which the building was used for 
military purposes until it was destroyed by fire 
in 1741. In 1790 the stone upon which the in- 
scription had been cut was found by workmen 
who were digging at the southern end of Bowling 
Green. The stone was put inside the Garden 
Street Church, but was destroyed when that 
building was burned in 1835. 

The gallows in the picture in question remind 
us that even in those early daj^s there were male- 
factors, and that the people of 1671 had to deal 
with criminals. The higher gallows has the rep- 
resentation of a man suspended from it. This 
was a punishment for malefactors introduced by 
Governor Kieft. The convicted man had a belt 
fastened around his waist and was then suspended 
in the air. In the print, the representation of a 
number of people gathered about the gallows in- 
dicates that there was public interest in watching 
the operation of this method of punishment. 
Governor Kief t's rule was in many ways most un- 

[45] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

fortunate, and while the records do not tell when 
this method of punishment was abandoned, it 
may be assumed that public sentiment finally con- 
demned it. 

Perhaps not the least interesting feature of the 
book is its maps, which show a remarkable accu- 
racy in their general delineation of the outlines of 
the Western Hemisphere. The Atlantic Coast, 
the Gulf of Mexico, the West Indies, and South 
America are in their general outlines reproduced 
with surprising accuracy. California is, however, 
represented as an island, and no attempt is made 
to complete the map of the northwestern part 
of North America. The island of Magellan — 
called on the map Maggelanica — is placed south 
of the continent of South America, with Cape 
Horn as its southern point. 

The volume contains many engravings, repre- 
senting the various phases of the lives of the peo- 
ple described, their religious ceremonies, includ- 
ing human sacrifices, and the chase, as well as 
pictures of cities and villages. 

A striking contrast is presented between the 
plate which accompanies the description of New 
York and that which pictures the city of Havana. 
At the entrance of the harbor of Havana there are 
stone piers and fortresses and a stone tower ; two 
tall spires rise above churches of considerable size, 

[46] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

and there are many more houses, and they are of 
larger size and more substantial appearance, than 
those which appear in the picture of New York. 

Although the plate which is reproduced here 
from the work of Montanus bears the date 1671, 
it represents the city at an earlier time. The pic- 
ture is generally considered to be a reproduction, 
with slight changes, of the plate which is an inset 
in the map of N. J. Visscher, entitled " Novi 
Belgii nov^eque Anglise nee non Partis Virgini^e 
Tabula, multis in locis emendata a Nicolas Joan- 
nis Visscher, 1656," and it is believed by some, 
although this is not established with certainty, 
that the picture of Visscher's map was taken from 
a sketch or drawing made by Augustine Her- 
mans in the year 1656. The following account 
of him is given in Jasper Dankers' and Peter 
Sluyter's " Journal of a Voyage to New York 
and a Tour in several of the American Colonies in 
1679-80," translated from the original manu- 
script and edited by Henry C. Murphy, Brook- 
lyn, 1867 (Long Island Historical Society 
JNIemoirs, Vol. I, page 230, foot-note) : 

Augustine Hermans or Heermans, called also Har- 
man, was a Bohemian by birth but came from Hol- 
land to New Amsterdam in or before 1647, in which year 
he was appointed by the Director and Council of New 

[47] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

Netherland one of the Nine Men, a body of citizens 
selected to assist the Government by their counsel and 
advice. He came over to this country as a clerk to John 
and Charles Gabry of Amsterdam. He was sent in 
company with Resolved Waldron by the Dutch Governor 
to the Governor of Maryland to confer in relation to 
the claim of title of the proprietor of Maryland to the 
South River. This no doubt led to his subsequent set- 
tlement on Bohemia river, so named by him, in that 
province. He seems to have been a surveyor and 
draughtsman. In addition to the map of Maryland, 
stated by our journal to have been made by him, which 
seems to have been the consideration for the grant of 
Bohemia manor, he made a sketch of the city of New 
Amsterdam, which was engraved on Nicolas Jan Viss- 
cher's map Novi Belgii Novaque Angliae nee non partis 
Virginije, published in 1650-6, and also on a reduced 
scale from Visscher's map on the map prefixed to the 
second edition of Vanderdonk's Description of New 
Netherland. 

The influence of the Dutch upon the city of 
New York has been lasting. Some of the names 
which are to-day honored in the great metropolis 
of the Western world are found in the records 
of the early years of the little settlement ; and al- 
though the throng of newcomers which has 
poured into the city from every corner of the 
world has taken from it its distinctively Dutch 

[ 48 ] 



DUTCH INFLUENCE IN NEW YORK 

characteristics, yet it must be recognized that the 
honesty and worth of men like Stuyvesant and 
his contemporaries have contributed in no small 
measure to the maintenance of the best traditions 
of the city. 



[49] 



ORANJE BOVEN 




N June 29, 1672, the partisans 
of the young Prince of Or- 
ange, welcomed him at Dor- 
drecht with the old national 
song, " Wilhelmus Van Nas- 
sau wen," and by hoisting an 
orange flag above a white flag, 
the upper one bearing an in- 
scription in Dutch : 

Oranje Boven! de Witten ander, 

Die 't Anders Meend die Slaat den Bonder. 

(Orange above, the whites under. 

Who thinks not so be struck by thunder.)^ 

The use of the word " de Witten " in the above 
couplet was a pun upon the name de Witt. " De 
Witten," meaning white, referred to the grand 

iBrodhead, History N. Y., Vol. II, page 203. 
[51] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

pensionary John de Witt and his brother Cor- 
nehiis, against whom the Dutch, at that time, had 
a strong f eehng of resentment, and both of whom 
were afterward murdered by the populace on 
August 20, 1672, as CorneHus de Witt was being 
released from prison. 

According to the historian of the Holland So- 
ciety of New York, which has done so much to 
perpetuate the memory of the Dutch founders of 
our city, the origin of the cry " Oranje Boven! " 
is as follows : When the *' Sea Beggars " first 
flung aloft the colors of William the Silent, 
orange, white, and blue in horizontal bars, there 
was some uncertainty as to which of the colors 
should be uppermost. To obviate the danger of 
mistake, it grew to be the custom of the skipper, 
in giving the command to raise the flag, to shout 
"Oranje Boven!" so that the Prince's colors 
should float nearest heaven.^ This old cry, which 
had been revived in the Fatherland, was soon to 
become as popular in that distant colony of the 
Netherlands across the sea. 

On August 12, 1673, the Dutch in America 
came again into their own. When the Dutch 
admirals Evertsen and Bencks, after having cap- 
tured the fort on Manhattan Island without a 
shot fired in its defense, ordered the Prince's 

' Holland Society Year Book 1901, page 108. 
[52] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

colors to be flung to the breeze from its flagstaiF, 
the old cry of " Oranje Boven! " must have rung 
out from the sturdy burghers as they welcomed 
their own countrymen marching down Broadway 
into the fort. In honor of this victorious young 
prince, then only twenty-two, the city of New 
Amsterdam, which for nine years had been called 
" New York," was now rechristened " New 
Orange," and Fort Amsterdam, which under 
English rule had been known as " Fort James," 
received the new name of " Fort William Hen- 
drick." 

To the conqueror as well as to the conquered, 
this event, which transferred the province from 
the possession of the English to the States-Gen- 
eral of Holland, was entirely unexpected. 

The recapture of New York was not due to any 
well-formed design, but was brought about by one 
of those lucky fortunes of war of which the Dutch 
took advantage. The Dutch fleet just prior to 
this time was cruising off the coast of Virginia 
and had captured a sloop of which a Yankee, 
Samuel Davis, was master. The admirals ques- 
tioned Davis as to the forces at New York. Davis 
replied with Yankee bluff that in two hours' time 
Governor Lovelace could raise five thousand men 
in defense of the fort, and that there were one 
hundred and fifty pieces of ordnance mounted, 

[53] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

fit for service, upon its walls. After receiving 
this information the Dutch admirals, it is said, 
felt no desire to go to New York. But on the 
sloop which they had captured was another New 
Englander, a Mr. Samuel Hopkins, who is re- 
ferred to as a " professor," and who had been liv- 
ing for some years at Elizabeth town. New Jersey. 
The admirals next inquired of him as to the de- 
fenses of New York, and received the reply that 
there might possibly be between sixty and eighty 
men at the fort; that in three or four days' 
time it might be possible to raise three or four 
hundred men; that there were only thirty to 
thirty-six pieces of ordnance on the walls of the 
fort, and that a shot or two would shake them out 
of their carriages.^ It was this information that 
started the Dutch fleet for New York, and it was 
due to Hopkins's veracity and the Dutch ability 
to get at the real facts that the English lost con- 
trol of the Province of New York from August, 
1673, to November, 1674. Honesty seems to have 
been the best policy for the professor, for subse- 
quent events, as proved by the records, show that 
on September 1, 1673, Hopkins was appointed, 
by the Dutch Council, secretary for the six New 

1 Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of 
N. Y., Vol. Ill, page 200. 

[54] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

Jersey towns, viz., Elizabethtown, Newark, 
Woodbridge, Piscataway, Middletown, and 
Shrewsbury.^ Hopkins's information upon the 
subject proved quite correct, for, according to 
Captain Manning, there were only seventy or 
eighty men in the fort and forty guns mounted 
on its w alls. 

The third of the series of views issued by the 
New York Chapter of the Colonial Order at their 
annual banquet, November 30, 1898, shows our 
city at this very interesting period in its history. 
Like the other five views of the city issued by the 
order, it is a line engraving by E. D. French, and 
it is entitled " New York in 1673 "; but, unlike 
some of the other views, the date which the title 
ascribes to it is approximately correct. ]Mr. 
French has faithfully reproduced this view of the 
city as it appears on the border of a map of the 
Dutch possessions in America, made by Matthew 
Seutter, Mr. William Loring Andrews having 
kindly loaned the order this map from his collec- 
tion. 

This view of the city of New York was pub- 
lished toward the close of the seventeenth cen- 
tury and in the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, on several maps and in various coUec- 

^ Documents Rel, Colonial History, Vol. II, page 595. 
[55] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

tions of views. The following is a list of the 
publications, arranged as nearly as possible in the 
chronological order of their appearance : 

1. Map of Hugo Allard. 

2- The first map of Carolus Allard. 

3. The second map of Carolus Allard. 

4. Carolus Allard's " Orbis Habitabilis Oppida et 
Vestitutus." 

5. Peter Schenk's " Hecatompolis." 

6. Peter Mortier's engraving of New Amsterdam. 

7. Maps of Matthew Seutter. 

8. Map of Tobias Cornelius Lotter. 

9. Map of Joacim Ottens. 

10. Map of Reinier and Joshua Ottens. 

1. MAP OF HUGO ALLARD:— This m^^ 

of a part of America, showing the New Nether- 
lands, was published toward the end of the seven- 
teenth century by Hugo Allard. It has the fol- 
lowing title : ''' TOTIUS NEOBELGII NOVA 
ET ACCURATISSIMA TABULAR and 
this view of New York City appears on its border 
with the following title: " Nieuw- Amsterdam on- 
langs Nieuw Jork genoemt en nu hernomen by 
de N ederlanders den 24- aug. 1673." ^ The map 
bears this inscription: "Hugo Allardt^ excut." 
A reproduction of this view, as it appears on 

^ Asher's Bibliography of New Netherlands. 
[56] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

Hugo Allard's map, may be seen in Asher's " List 
of the Maps and Charts of New Netherlands and 
of the Views of New Amsterdam." As there is 
in this city no original of this map with which a 
comparison can be made, it cannot be stated whe- 
ther the view has been accurately reproduced in 
all its details. There are evidences that it proba- 
bly has not been faithfully reproduced. Hugo 
(or Huyck) Allard was a Dutch portrait en- 
graver,^ his principal portrait being that of 
Adrian Pau.^ He is said to have flourished about 
the middle of the seventeenth century, but no bi- 
ography of him gives either the date of his birth 
or death. There is a landscape by him dated 
" 1696." It is the opinion of Asher that the ori- 
ginal engraving for the view on Hugo Allard's 
map was made by the celebrated artist, Romeyn 
de Hooge, who was born at The Hague in 1646 
and died in 1708.^ Strutt says that Romeyn de 
Hooge was a designer of considerable note,^ and 
that, " as to his etchings, no man ever handled the 
point with more facility than he." Most of his 
important engravings were dedicated to his pa- 

* Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Vol. I, page 21. 
Kramm, Vols. I-II, page 12. Nagler, Vol. I, page 60. 

' Spooner's Biographical History of the Fine Arts, page 18. 
' Bryan's Dictionary Painters and Engravers, Vol. I, page 370. 
Spooner, page 410. Kramm, Vols. III-IV, page 736. 

* Strutt, Biographical Dictionary Engravers, Vol. II, page 30. 

[57] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

tron, the Prince of Orange, but in no account of 
his works is this engraving mentioned. 

2 and 3. THE MAPS OF CAROLUS AL- 
LARD: — Carolus Allard published two maps 
of the New Netherlands. The first of these bore 
the same title as Hugo Allard's map, except that 
it had the signature '' Carolus Altar dt, excut." in 
the place of "Hugo Allardi, eoccui." His first 
map is said to have been the same as Hugo Al- 
lard's map, and the view of New York on its bor- 
der is the same as Hugo Allard's view. When 
he issued his second map, he is said to have made 
changes in the map and to have made additions 
both to the title of the view and to the signature 
of the map.^ The title of the view on his second 
map has the following words added ; " eindelijk 
aan de Engelse Weder afgestaan "^(meaning "fi- 
nally again surrendered to the English") .^ The 
signature to the map was changed so that it reads 
as follows: " Typis Car oil Allard Amstelodami 
cum privilegio/' Windsor, in his " Narrative and 
Critical History of America," reproduces this 
view of New York, and states that it is from Caro- 
lus Allard's second map, and gives a key showing 
the various buildings in the city by initial letters. 

* Asher's Bibliography of New Netherlands. 
^ Wilson's Memorial History N. Y., page 347. 

[58] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

This key, as given by Windsor, corresponds ex- 
actly with the key accompanying the view on Ot- 
ten's map, which will be referred to later. Caro- 
lus AUard, sometimes called Karl Allard, was a 
copperplate engraver at Amsterdam who flour- 
ished toward the close of the seventeenth century 
and in the beginning of the eighteenth century.^ 
He was also a print-seller. He published at Am- 
sterdam in 1695 and again in 1705 a book called 
" Niewe Hollandse Scheeps-Bouw," etc., being 
a treatise on the architecture of ships, and contain- 
ing engravings of English, Dutch, and French 
admirals' ships, also engravings of the flags of 
all nations. He also published engravings of por- 
traits of various distinguished persons, including 
the Lady Cleverland, Nell Gwyn, Louise, Duch- 
ess of Portsmouth, and others.^ 

4. CAROLUS ALLARD'S " ORBIS HA- 
BITABILIS OPPIDA ET VESTITU- 

TUS '':— This was a book published at Amster- 
dam (no date) by Carolus Allard, containing one 
hundred colored views of various cities, two of 
which are of New York, both being our view ; but 
in one a greater part of the city is obscured by al- 

* Bryan's Dictionary Painters and Engravers, Vol. I, page 21. 
Nagler, Vol. I, page 60. Spooner, page 18. 

*Kramm, Vols. I-II, page 11. Strutt's Biographical Dictionary of 
Engravers, Vol. I, page 13. Spooner, page 18. 

[59] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

legorical figures in the foreground. A reproduc- 
tion of these two views may be seen in Mr. Wil- 
ham Loring Andrews's book, " New Amsterdam, 
New Orange and New York." A copy of this 
book may be found at the Lenox Branch of the 
New York Public Library in this city. A care- 
ful comparison of this view with those produced 
on the above-mentioned maps will show several 
noticeable variations. In this view, as well as in 
the two succeeding views that will be mentioned, 
the weigh-house is situated between the dock at 
the foot of Whitehall Street and the pier next 
north, extending in the East River, while on all 
the map views the weigh-house is situated to the 
north of the long dock. The direction of the 
wind, as shown by the flags in this view, appears 
to be northeast, while in the views on the maps 
it always appears to be from the southwest. 

6. PETER SCHENK'S " HECATOM- 
POLIS ";— In the year 1702 Peter Schenk pub- 
lished at Amsterdam a book with the following 
title: " Hecatompolis sive Totius Orhis Terra- 
rum Oppida Nobiliora Centum exquisite Col- 
lecta atque eleganter depicta." This work con- 
tains one hundred views in black and white of 
various cities of the world, and our view is given 
on plate 92 with the following title: 

[60] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

Nieu Amsterdam een ste- Amstelodamum recens, 

deken in Noord Amerikaes postea Anglis illud possi- 

I Nieu Hollant, op het dentibus | dictum Eboar- 

eilant Mankattan : namaels cum novum, Hollandiae 

Nieu-jork genaemt, | toen novae, id est Americae | 

het geraekte in H gebiet Mexicanae sive Septentri- 

der Engelschen. onalis oppidulum. 

A copy of this book may be seen in the Lenox 
Branch of the New York Public Library, and 
there is another copy in ]Mr. William Loring An- 
drews's library. The two copies seem to differ 
only in the fact that in Mr. Andrews's copy the 
plates are all numbered, whereas in the Lenox 
copy they have no numbers. Peter Schenk was 
an engraver, publisher, and art collector. He was 
born at Elberfeld in Germany in 1645. He mar- 
ried the daughter of Gerard Valck, a celebrated 
portrait-painter, who was born about 1626 and 
died 1720. Peter Schenk went into partnership 
some time after 1672 with his father-in-law 
Valck, and together they bought out the stock 
of J. Jansen at Amsterdam, who had been a pub- 
lisher of maps, and who was then deceased. 
Schenk and Valck published a multitude of 
prints engraved both by themselves and others. 
In 1683 Schenk and Valck published in two vol- 
umes their large Dutch Atlas. Schenk was 
named by Augustus II, King of Poland, as 

[61] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

" Hofgraveur." Peter Schenk died in 1715. 
Nagler gives a list of 179 of his engravings.^ 
Gerard Valck is said to have engraved one of the 
finest prints we have. It is that of the Duchess 
of Mazarin, done in 1678. Valck was at work in 
England in 1672, where he engraved a portrait 
of James II, and also of Nell Gwyn.^ 

6. PETER MORTIER'S ENGRAVING 
OF NEW AMSTERDA3I:— This engraving 
is supposed to have been published about the year 
1690. It is on a plate 71 inches by 9f inches, 
and was probably originally published in a col- 
lection of views. A copy of this engraving by 
itself may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art in New York City, in the Huntington 
Collection. Its title is as follows: '' N. Amster- 
dam ou N. Jork in Ameriq/' Information as to 
Peter Mortier, his birth and death and other cir- 
cumstances of his life, is very meager. It is 
known, however, that he was an art collector at 
Amsterdam, and a publisher, and that his name 
appears on the pages of a work by Luyken.^ He 

" Bryan's Dictionary Painters and Engravers, Vol. II, page 465. 
Kramm, Vols. V-VI, page 1473. Nagler, Vol. XV, page 185. Spooner, 
page 859. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. XXXI, page 56. 

^ Bryan's Dictionary Painters and Engravers, Vol. II, page 603. 
Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, Vol. Ill, page 940. Nagler, 
Vol. XIX, page 304. Spooner, page 1009. Kramm, Vols. V-VI, 
page 1669. 

* Nagler, Vol. IX, page 510. 

[62] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

published at Amsterdam, in the year 1700, a folio 
entitled: ''Atlas Nouveau, Contenant Toutes 
Les Parties Du Monde. Par Sanson. Presents 
au Dauphin par Jaillot." He also published 
" Atlas Maior " of Frederick de Wit at Amster- 
dam, which on its colored frontispiece has the no- 
tice, " Sold by Christopher Browne at ye Globe 
at the West End of St. Paul's Church." ^ This 
was probably published about the year 1690. A 
close comparison of this view as shown in the three 
prints made by Carolus Allard, Peter Schenk, 
and Peter JNIortier, would lead to the conclusion 
that though different plates were used, yet the 
three are copies of each other; but as to who was 
the originator and who were the followers it is 
difficult to determine. 

7. MAPS OF MATTHEW SEUTTER: 

— Matthew Seutter was a German map manu- 
facturer and publisher and engraver on copper. 
He was born at Augsburg, Germany, in 1678, 
and when young was apprenticed at Nuremberg 
to Johann Baptist Homann, who at that time 
was one of the most noted map-manufacturers, 
and upon whom the Emperor Charles VI in 1715 
conferred the title of " Imperial Geographer." 
Homann was born in 1663 and died in 1724.^ 

' See Atlas in Lenox Library. 

^ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. XIII, page 35. 

[63] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

After serving an apprenticeship with Homann, 
Seutter commenced the work of publishing maps 
in 1707 at Augsburg, and in 1730, Homann be- 
ing then dead, he received the title of " Imperial 
Geographer." He continued the publication of 
maps at Augsburg until his death in 1757, when 
his business Avas continued by his son-in-law 
Lotter.^ Seutter published maps of all countries, 
and on many of them he engraved plans and 
views of cities. Many of his maps may be seen in 
the libraries of the various societies in this city. 
His map from which Mr. French copied the view 
at the head of this article bore the following title : 

RECENS EDITA | TOTIUS | NOVI BELGII | IN 
I AMERICA SEPTENTRIONALI | SITI, | DELIN- 
EATIO I CURA ET SUMTIBUS, | MATTHAEI 
SEUTTERI, I SAC. CAES. MAJ. GEOGRAPHI | 
AUGUST VIND. 

Cum Gratia et Privil. S. R. I. Vicariat \ in parti Rheni, 
Sveviae, et Juris \ Franconicis. 

The view has the simple title, " Neu Jorck sive 
Neu Amsterdam." Below the view on this map 
appears a key in the Latin language, showing 
by initial letters the various public buildings and 
places of interest. It will be seen from the title 
of tliis map, which is in Mr. Andrews's collection, 

^ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. XXXIV, page 70. 
[64] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

that it was published after the year 1730, as 
Seutter has inscribed himself " Sac. Caes. Maj. 
Geographi " (Imperial Geographer) "August 
Vind." (Augsburg or Augusta Vindelicorum) . 
There is in the New York Historical Society li- 
brary another map published by Seutter with the 
same title and view, except that he has added after 
his own name the simple designation " Chalcogra- 
phi Augustani," " Chart -maker of Augsburg," 
omitting his title of " Imperial Geographer," 
which would indicate that the Historical Society 
map was published before he received that royal 
favor, and therefore at an earlier date than Mr. 
Andrews's copy. The Seutter map at the His- 
torical Society is bound in a very interesting col- 
lection of old maps, some eighteen or twenty of 
which are Seutter's work, and a few of the maps 
showing various parts of North America. This 
volume of maps is entitled: "Atlas of 185 Maps \ 
collected in Holland \ about the year 1760 \ by 
I Dirk Van Der Weyde, A. 31., \ bound in the 
City of Old Amsterdam \ 1763; \ presented to 
the I Historical Society \ in the City of New Am- 
sterdam I by his grandson \ Pieter Hendrik Van 
Der Weyde, M.D., \ 1863/' Seutter's work on 
these maps, when compared with that of the other 
publishers, appears much inferior, the lines be- 
ing heavy and the work clumsily done. 

[65] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

8. MAP OF TOBIAS CORNELIUS 

LOTTER: — Asher states that Letter published 
a map of New Netherlands with a title identical 
with that of Seutter's, except that in place of the 
words " Matthaei Seutteri," appear the words 
" Tob. Conr. Lotteri." As Tobias Lotter was 
Seutter's son-in-law and succeeded to his business 
in 1757, and also to his title of Imperial Geog- 
rapher, the date of the publication of Lotter's 
map may be placed certainly as late as 1757. No 
original of this map has been accessible for ref- 
erence in this city, but Asher states that it con- 
tains our view of the city on its border. Lotter 
was born in 1717 and died in 1777. 

9. MAP OF JOACIM OTTENS :— Asher 

states that Joacim Ottens published a map of 
New Netherlands which was exactly the same as 
Carolus Allard's second map, the only change 
being that the words " Joacim Ottens " appear 
in the signature in place of the words " Carolus 
Allard," and that it contains this same view of the 
city.^ 

10. MAP OF REINIER AND JOSHUA 

OTTENS: — A very fine copy of this map may 
be seen in the Lenox Branch of the New York 

• Asher's Bibliography of New Netherlands. 

[66] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

Public Library, bound in an extra illustrated 
copy of Mary L. Booth's " History of the City 
of New York." The title of the map is identical 
with that of the title of Carolus Allard's second 
map, and the signature is the same as Joacim 
Ottens's map, except that the words " Typis Joa- 
cim " have been replaced by the words " apud 
JReinier (§ Joshua" The title of the view on this 
map is as follows: '' Nieuw Amsterdam onlangs 
Nieuw Jorck genaemt, ende hemomen bj de Ne- 
derlanders op den 24- aug. 1673, eindelyk aan de 
Engelse weder afgestaan" This title corre- 
sponds exactly with the title of the view on Caro- 
lus Allard's second map, as quoted by Windsor. 
This map was reproduced in 1897 by the historian 
of the State of New York in the Historical Se- 
ries, Volume II. Below the view on this map ap- 
pears the key in the Dutch language, showing 
by initial letters the various public buildings, etc. 
Asher states that this map was struck off from 
the same plate as that used by Carolus Allard 
for his second map. If Ottens did not change 
the plate, there are indications on the map itself 
which would go to prove that the view on Carolus 
Allard's second map was intended to represent 
the recapture of New York by the Dutch. On 
the south side of Long Island, on this Ottens map, 
just off the shore there appear several ships, and 

[67] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

below them appears this inscription: " Vleet van 
Corn. Evertsen/' This Ottens map was prob- 
ably published about the middle of the eighteenth 
century. About the year 1738 Reinier and 
Joshua Ottens published at Amsterdam an Atlas 
entitled : " Atlas van Zeevaert en Koophandel," 
etc., giving maps of the various countries in the 
world, but which does not contain this map, al- 
though it contains a map of the extreme north- 
ern part of America. 

Joseph W. Moulton published in 1825 this 
view of New York, stating that it represented the 
recapture of New York by the Dutch in 1673. 
Moulton also states that this view is a reproduc- 
tion of a manuscript copy of the view on Ottens's 
map, made by Du Simitier in 1679. In a later 
pamphlet, entitled " New York 170 years ago," 
published by Moulton in 1843 with this view, he 
repeats his statement as to its being a copy of Du 
Simitier's manuscript, but does not state the 
source from which Du Simitier made his copy. 
Moulton's print is much more distinct than the 
view on Ottens's map, and varies from it in sev- 
eral respects ; and it is possible that he later con- 
cluded that he was mistaken in the statement as 
to its being a copy of Ottens. In one or two 
points, such as the direction of the wind and the 
location of the gate-house at Wall Street, it re- 

[68] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

sembles the view on the prints published by 
Schenk and by Mortier, while in all other respects 
it bears a very close resemblance to the Ottens 
view. 

The key designating the various public places, 
as it appears in Dutch on the Allard and Ottens 
maps, and in Latin on the Seutter map, is given 
on page 70 with a translation into English. 



[69] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

I °3 i^ 1 Si il . 

^ is ^s - ^ Ij-^ 

, I ^^ ^1 . .. . >. I i^l.^ 

I I. Mail i-silil.^lli^iiii^l 

li; S fa >-, Pi O Ph p., H H iJ H H H H ;> tLi X H 

^ CQ d QWfaOE'"'^ J ^ Iz <^ '^ C^(^ '^ ^* 
.<5J2oSS'g "t 



4: T3 m H 






^-a ^'^ -3 . . ': ."« ^'w 



llPiil^-i^l .1.1 III I 

I S^J2^Sg^SS3o«'^J^3^S§t^So3°W'S 



m CJ O H fa Offi-^ WJ § :ziOfa ©"cSc/iH 



•« 4> > 5 5 
• > rt rg 5 . .So 

^ -si II -lis s ^e --M^ 

I § 3|e ifo so I §^1 65| ig-lis^os ^ 

ii i ;^ JS S ^2 a B S i '-S S -g P - I - :! iS a I > ^ •?= 
^^-T^ao-igElgsl^Sg^g^lol^ 

O fa fa O H Q O H O O H fa fa fa > S fa Q fa 



c 



3 .5 (X! 

pa U Q fa faOK"^ W'-' S^ O'^O''^^^ 



[70] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

To briefly state the history of some of the 
buildings and locations which have now become 
historic will, it is believed, add much to the in- 
terest of the picture and serve to recall the cus- 
toms, manners, and men of those times, the 
memory of which the Colonial Order seeks to 
perpetuate. 

A. Albany Sloops. — There are five of these 
sloops, whose sails may be seen to the southwest 
of the fort, anchored in the Hudson River. In 
Governor Andros's report, made in 1678, he 
says: " There may lately have traded to ye Coll- 
ony in a year from tenn to fifteen shipps or ves- 
sells of about together 100 tunns each, English, 
New England and our owne built; of which five 
small shipps and a Ketch now belonging to New 
Yorke, foure of them built there." 

B. Flagstaff. — In the various forms which 
this view has taken, the flagstaff has always ap- 
peared the same, with the little steps or cross- 
pieces nailed on it at regular intervals to help the 
heavy Dutchman reach the top, where he watched 
for ships coming into the bay. The flag which 
flew from the staff has not always been the same. 
Up to 1650 it was the flag of the Dutch West In- 
dia Company, which, like the national ensign of 
the United Provinces of the Netherlands, con- 
sisted of three horizontal bars, orange, white, and 

[71] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

blue, but with a monogram of the letters " G. W. 
C." added to the white stripe. 

The national ensign was adopted in 1582 at the 
suggestion of William I, Prince of Nassau and 
Orange, and was composed of his colors, orange, 
white, and blue.^ After the year 1650, upon the 
death of William II, a red stripe was substituted 
for the orange. It was probably this new national 
ensign that floated over the fort until its surren- 
der to the British in 1664. At that time the Eng- 
lish Jack was then flung to the breeze and waved 
until 1 673, when it gave place again to the Dutch 
national ensign. It is possible that the old ensign 
of orange, white, and blue was used at this time 
instead of the red, white, and blue, for in the ac- 
count of the commissioners sent in October, 1673, 
to the Long Island towns to compel submission 
to the Dutch authority, it is stated that they car- 
ried on their ships the Prince's colors at the mast- 
heads. 

C. The Fort. — The fort, which was com- 
menced in 1626, was finished in 1635, and known 
as Fort Amsterdam until 1664, when it was called 
" James Fort," and from 1673 to 1674 it is re- 
ferred to in all the official records as " Fort Wil- 
liam Hendrick." From 1674 to 1689 it was 
again known as "Fort James"; from 1689 to 

^ Brodhead's History of New York, Vol. I, page 19. 
[72] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

1691 it was called " Fort William "; from 1691 
to 1702 it was called "Fort William Henry"; 
from 1702 to 1714 it was called " Fort Anne "; 
and from 1714 till after the Revolution it was 
called " Fort George." It was demolished in 
1790. A tablet at No. 4 Bowling Green marks 
its site. 

At the time the English surrendered, the fort 
had fallen into bad repair, and all the fortifica- 
tions along the river front and across Wall Street 
were in a dilapidated condition.^ The Dutch 
authorities started in at once to put matters in 
better shape for defense, and at the time of this 
view much had already been done, and at a great 
expenditure of money. On February 9, 1674, a 
tax was laid upon all the citizens owning over 
$200 worth of property. There were 135 such 
persons, and the total assessed valuation was 
$208,360. Failing to raise a sufficient amount 
by taxation, the authorities went so far as to 
mortgage, in default of other ready effects, the 
cannon in the fort, as appears by the following 
extract from the Council meeting on May 12, 
1674: 

We, the undersigned, Governor-General and Council 
of War of New Netherlands, do hypothecate, pawn, 

* Documents Relating to Colonial History, Vol. Ill, page 199, 
[73] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

place, and bond the metal cannon lying in Fort Willem 
Hendrick as a special mortgage to Nicholas Bayard, 
Secretary and Receiver-General of New Netherlands, as 
security for the moneys adva,nced and to be advanced 
by him and which have been borrowed by him from divers 
merchants in this city, and in case of non-payment of 
said moneys, with a special power to ship the said cannon 
and sell the same in Fatherland, and in case said can- 
non in the conveyance to Fatherland happen, contrary 
to hope, to be lost, the same shall be absolutely at the risk 
and damage of the State, in which case the said Re- 
ceiver Bayard shall be paid out of the other most availa- 
ble public property.^ 

The work must have been well done, for the 
Rev. Charles Wooley, who was the first English 
chaplin at the fort, states : 

It is one of the strongest and best situated garrisons 
in the North parts of America, and was never taken but 
once, through the default of Captain Manning, who in 
absence of the Governor suffered the Dutch to take it, 
for which he was condemned to exile to a small island, 
from his name called Manning's Island, where I have 
been several times with the said captain, whose entertain- 
ment was continually a bowl of rum punch.^ 

D. The Jail. — This building in the fort, built 
by Governor Kieft, was used for prisoners of the 

^ Documents Relating to Colonial History, "Vol. II, page 710. 
2Wooley's Journal. 

[74] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

West India Company, and a part of the City 
Hall was used as a jail for the burgher prisoners.^ 
E. The Reformed Church. — This building was 
usually known as the Church in the Fort, and also 
as the Church of St. Nicholas. It was built in the 
year 1642 and was seventy-two feet long, fifty- 
two feet wide, and sixteen feet high, and cost 2500 
guilders, or £416 13s. 4d. Just prior to the time 
of our view the city authorities had granted the 
petition of the church, presented on March 21, 
1672, and made an allowance of five hundred 
guilders for the purpose of renovating the same.^ 
The church was demolished in 1693. It had a 
tower, faced on three sides with a sun-dial, and in 
which a new bell, made about this time, had just 
been placed. The bell bore the following in- 
scription : ^ 

Dulcior e nostris tinnitibus resonat aer. 
(The air resounds sweeter from our ringing.) 
P. Hemony me fecit, 1674. 

This building was destroyed by fire in 1741. 
At the time of our view the services were con- 
ducted by the minister. Rev. Samuel Drisius, who 
preached in the morning, and by the Rev. Mgi- 

^ Records of New Amsterdam, Vol. II, page 289. 
* Records of New Amsterdam, Vol. VI, page 367. 
» Historical Discourse by Thomas De Witt, 1857, page 98. 

[75] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

dius Luyck, who preached in the afternoon.^ 
Rev. Samuel Drisius came from Holland in 

1652 to act as assistant minister. He died in 
1681. u3ligidius Luyck was in 1660 a young man 
of twenty-two, employed as a tutor in the family 
of Governor Stuyvesant. After 1664 he went 
to Holland and studied theology, and returned to 
New York, where he conducted a Latin school. 
He took a prominent part in the affairs of the 
city, and was a member of the last Dutch gov- 
ermnent of the city in 1674. After 1678 the 
Rev. Charles Wooley, the first EngHsh chaplain, 
held service in the church in the afternoons, with 
an attendance of but twenty-five or thirty per- 
sons. 

F. The Governor's House. — This house is 
shown in the earlier views of the city at the same 
place in the fort. It was built by Gk)vernor 
Kieft, being one hundred feet long, fifty feet 
wide, and twenty-four feet high. At the time of 
our view it was occupied by Anthony Colve, who 
had been appointed governor by the Dutch Coun- 
cil of War. 

G. The Public Storehouses. — 

H. Public Scales J or the Weigh-house.— In 

1653 the Dutch West India Company granted 
to the citizens the right to erect a weigh-scales 

* Records of New Amsterdam, Vol. "VI, page 292. 

[76] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

at the wharf. This building was erected at the 
right hand or northerly side of the long dock ex- 
tending out into the East River between White- 
hall Street and Broad Street. This dock, which 
the Dutch called the " Hooft," and which had 
been in existence for many years, was extended 
in 1659, and again extended four rods farther 
in 1660, and renewed in 1667. The Duke's plan 
of the city, made in 1661, shows this dock with 
the weigh-house situated on the north side. The 
drawing made by the Labadists in 1679 shows this 
dock with the weigh-house on its northerly side 
and another house on its southerly side. The 
house on the southerly side was the market-house, 
which was erected by the city in the year 1677, as 
the records of January in that year state that 
" the market is now being built by the waterside, 
near the bridge and the weigh-house." This 
market building was removed in 1684.^ 

/. The Great Ditch, as it was then called, now 
Broad Street. — As appears by the earlier views 
of the city, Broad Street was formerly nothing 
more than an open ditch and a marshy piece of 
ground. It was first built up and planked on 
its sides in the year 1657. In the j^ear 1659 the 
planking was completed, and in 1660 a tax was 
levied upon the property facing the ditch to pay 

* Valentine's Manual, 1862, page 504. 

[77] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

for the work. In 1671 the work of building up 
the sides of the ditch, in the same manner as here- 
tofore, was extended as far as Exchange Place, 
and Broad Street remained an open canal with 
a paved way on each side until the year 1676, 
when the city authorities ordered it filled up and 
leveled over. Dancker's sketch, made in 1679, 
shows Broad Street leveled over, and no trace 
left of the canal or ditch but the opening of a 
sewer on the East River shore/ 

K. The Stadt House, or City Hall— This 
building, which was situated at the place which is 
now the head of Coenties Slip, was formerly the 
City Tavern, built by the West India Company 
in 1646, but granted to the city for a city hall 
in the year 1653. In April, 1652, permission was 
given by the West India Company for its use as 
a public school by the new schoolmaster, Jan 
de la Montagnie. This building was also used for 
a time as a prison about the year 1656. The 
building had a belfry or little tower on it, in 
which was hung a bell which was purchased in 
the year 1656. Our view fails to show the belfry, 
but it is quite apparent in the Duke's plan made 
in 1661, and also in Dancker's view made in 1679. 
A gallows was erected in front of the City Hall 
in 1660, but it is not shown in our view. In front 

* Valentine's Manual, 1863, page 514. 

[78] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

of this building the declaration of war made by 
England against Holland April 4, 1672, was 
read to the people on July 9, 1672, and the 
treaty of peace between England and Hol- 
land, concluded February 19, 1674, was also 
proclaimed from the State House July 11, 
1674/ 

In this building were held the sessions of the 
Burgomaster's Court, where, on December 8, 
1654, Director-General Stuyvesant delivered to 
the presiding burgomaster the first seal of the 
city, together with a painted coat of arms and a 
silver signet, all of which had just arrived in the 
ship Pear Tree. Here also at a later date— on 
October 6, 1669— Governor Lovelace presented 
to the mayor and aldermen, as a particular testi- 
mony of His Royal Highness's grace and favor 
to his city of New York, a public seal for the 
corporation, a silver mace, and seven gowns for 
the use of the mayor, aldermen, and sheriff, and 
stated that while His Royal Highness esteemed 
some of these " but as the gaiety and circum- 
stantial part of government," he wished to assure 
the city that it would receive all encouragement 
and his hearty assistance.^ Great weight seems 
to have been given at this time to forms and cere- 

^ Records of New Amsterdam, Vol. VII, page 106. 
= Documentary History, Vol. Ill, page 398. 

[79] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

monies in the conduct of the city government, 
as appears by the entry in the city records for 
November 9, 1674, which was the last official 
designation of the city as " New Orange," when 
the then governor-general, Anthony Colve, ap- 
peared in the Burgomaster's Court and stated 
that he should " deliver the fort and province 
of New Netherlands to Major Andrews [An- 
dros] in behalf of His Majesty of Great Bri- 
tain," and directing that " the five flags of the 
outside people, with the cushions and table-cloth 
now in the City Hall, be taken in charge by Bur- 
gomaster Johannes Van Brugh, until they should 
be demanded and taken away by supreme author- 
ity."^ 

At this time a mace was carried by a mace- 
bearer at the head of the procession of city magis- 
trates when they appeared in court, and the 
magistrates wore the gowns which had been espe- 
cially prepared for them. The beadles and other 
subordinate officers of the city wore a livery, the 
colors being blue tipped with orange. 

The last representatives of the Dutch who 
occupied the high places in the City Hall 
and administered the government of the city, 
were: 

* Records of New Amsterdam, Vol. VII, page 138. 
[80] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

Sellout, Captain Willem Knyff . 

Burgomasters, Johannes Van Brugh. 

Willem Beckman. 
Schepens, Jacob Kip. 

Guilaine Verplanck. 

Francois Rombouts. 

Christopher Hooghland. 

Stephanus Van Cortlandt. 

L. Lutheran Church. — The Lutherans were 
not favored while the city was under Dutch gov- 
ernment, as the Reformed Church was the State 
church. They had been compelled to erect their 
church outside the city wall. Their church was 
built in the year 1671 outside of the wall, and 
was situated on Broadway. After the Dutch 
regained possession of the city and commenced to 
put the place in better shape for defense, sev- 
eral houses and buildings which lay in front of 
the fort and fortifications of the city were ordered 
demolished and removed.^ Among them was the 
Lutheran church, which was situated just north 
of Wall Street on Broadway. The owners of the 
property which was destroyed under this order of 
the government were reimbursed by having new 
lots assigned to them and partially by the pay- 
ment of moneys. 

* Records of New Amsterdam, Vol. VII, page 13. 
[81] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

To the Lutheran church on May 26, 1674, 
was assigned lot No. 5 in the Company's gar- 
den, which was a plot on Broadway at the 
present southwest comer of Rector Street. 
The minister of the Lutheran church at this time 
was the Rev. Bernard Arensius.^ The former 
minister, Jacobus Frabitius, who seems to have 
been a man of not irreproachable character, had 
been given permission by the governor to preach 
his farewell sermon on August 11, 1671, and 
to install the new come minister.^ Wooley in his 
Journal states that in 1680 the Lutheran minister 
in New York was one Bernhardus Frazius.^ 

M. and O. The Water Gate and the Land 
Gate. — These were the two gates in the city wall 
built from the East to the North rivers, across the 
island, and which is now commemorated by the 
existence of Wall Street, along the line where 
the palisades or wall originally stood. In the year 
1665 there were but ten houses fronting the wall, 
and the nimiber had grown to but seventeen 
in 1677. The wall was first built in the year 
1653, with stakes or palisades of the height of 
twelve feet, and the city was compelled to bor- 
row the money in order to pay for the same. The 

' Brodhead, Vol. II, page 174. 

' Documentary History of the State of New York, Vol. Ill, 
page 399, 
^ Wooley's Journal, page 67. 

[82] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

work was finished on July 21 of that year. In the 
year 1656 the gate near the East River, known as 
the Water Gate, was erected under the special 
direction of Captain Coninck. In the year 1673, 
after the Dutch recaptured New York, the wall 
and fortifications were renewed. 

On December 27, 1673, the governor made a 
provision for grand rounds, and provided that the 
city gates should be closed at sundown by the 
mayor of the city and his attendant train bands, 
and in like manner should be opened at sunrise 
each day. As appears by the view, the city at this 
time did not extend above Wall Street, except in 
a few scattered houses. The unsettled state of 
the country is best shown by the regulation passed 
November 14, 1673, in regard to a bounty upon 
wolves, reciting that on account of the great rav- 
ages by wolves, any wolf shot on Manliattan 
Island south of Harlem would be paid for by a 
bounty of twenty florins, and for each she-wolf 
thirty florins. 

N. The Smithes Valley. — This was the name 
of what is now Pearl Street, between Wall Street 
and Franklin Square. It was sometimes called 
the Smith's Fly. It was known by this name as 
early as 1639. In 1674 there were twenty-foui' 
owners of property between Franklin Square and 
Wall Street on Smith's Valley. 

[83] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

P. The Way to the Fresh Water. — This was 
the road leading to the fresh-water pond called 
the Collect, a corruption of Calch Hook, which 
was situated at where Broadway and Canal Street 
now are. The Way to the Fresh Water has now 
become Broadway. At this time there were but 
four residents on this road. 

Q. The Windmill. — This is probably the wind- 
mill of Peter Jansen Mesier. A windmill was 
erected in 1662 on Broadway between Liberty 
and Cortlandt streets, the stone and iron for which 
were given by the governor and Council. 

R. Fortresses. — These are the little round 
docks or half -moons built out into the East River. 
The half -moon in front of the City Hall was re- 
paired in July, 1672. This was called the " Stadt 
Huys Battery." The one between this battery 
and Wall Street was called the " Burgher Bat- 
tery," and the half -moon at the foot of Wall 
Street was called the " Wall Street Battery." 

S. Stuyvesanfs House. — Stuyvesant's house, 
which appears at the foot of Whitehall Street, 
had been built by Governor Peter Stuyvesant 
some time prior to 1658, in which year the city 
authorities confirmed his title to the property, he 
having stated in a petition that he had at great 
expense to liimself filled up this low land and 
planked the shore and erected his house thereon. 

[84] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

This was not his official residence, but his private 
property. At the time of our view the last of the 
Dutch governors had departed to his long rest, 
having died between January 1 and March 25, 
16T2. 

T. The East River j flowing between 3Ianhat- 
tan Island and Yorkshire or Long Island. — The 
shore of the East River appears to have been 
beautifully built up and bulkheaded at the time 
of this view, and from an inspection of the earlier 
views of New York it would appear to have been 
a work of great magnitude to make such im- 
provement. From an inspection of the city rec- 
ords it seems to have been a difficult thing for 
even Dutchmen, used to building dikes and dams, 
to bring the shore of the river up to its then condi- 
tion. In 1654 only one person, one Sybout Clae- 
sen, living next to the City Hall, had commenced 
shoring up the bank and protecting his front 
from the waters of the East River. In that year, 
however, the city authorities ordered that all gar- 
dens from Broad Street to the City Hall should 
be planked up, or, as the Dutch called this work, 
" schoeinge." In 1655, a further order of the 
authorities was made for sheet-piling along the 
East River from the City Hall to Wall Street. 
In 1656 the work was finished in front of the City 
Hall. The owners of the property along the East 

[85] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

River seemed to have been rather slow in carry- 
ing out this improvement, for in the records of 
the Mayor's Court, on December 20, 1671, ap- 
pears an order that the marshal give warning to 
the neighbors between the State House and the 
Graft to cause their proportions of the wall be- 
fore their houses to be finished and filled up. 
Again on April 30, 1672, the sheriff complains 
that certain people have failed to pave the street 
and construct sheet-pilings on the strand. 
Among those cited were persons owning prop- 
erty between Broad and Wall streets on the East 
River. 

In comparing the various publications of this 
view of the city, the differences which appear 
are so slight that it seems reasonably certain they 
all had their origin in one source. According to 
Asher, that source was probably an engraving 
made by Romej^n de Hooge, and first published 
on Hugo Allard's map. While it is probably 
true that this view was first published on Hugo 
Allard's map, there is nothing to indicate that 
it was the work of Romeyn de Hooge. Where 
chd Allard get the material for this view? Did 
he use a sketch made here in this country bj^ an 
eye-witness, or did he take the earlier published 
views of the city for a groundwork, making 
changes and additions according to the latest in- 

[86] 



ORANJE BOVEN 

formation received as to the improvements made 
since their pubHcation ? Though the view is in the 
main a faithful portrayal of the appearance of 
the city at the time it is supposed to speak, the 
absence of such a striking feature as the belfry 
on the Stadt Huys, which is shown in the La- 
badists' sketches made in 1679, and which from 
the Duke's Plan we know had been built before 
1661, is an indication that the view was not the 
work of an eye-witness. Another fact that would 
lead to the same conclusion is the substantial ap- 
pearance of Stuyvesant's house and the other 
buildings shown in the view, when as a matter 
of fact these buildings were of a most primitive 
nature, as shown by the Labadists' sketches. 
The two Labadists, Jasper Dankers and Peter 
Sleutter, came here in September, 1679, and made 
several sketches of the city, which are probably 
the most correct representations now existing 
of the appearance of New York at the time of 
its surrender by the Dutch. These interesting 
sketches may be seen in Henry C. INlurphy's pub- 
lication of the journal of these travelers. 

This view, notwithstanding its inaccuracies, 
nevertheless contains enough evidence to prove 
its date. It must have been made after the year 
1670, for the canal in Broad Street, which in this 
view appears regularly built up and planked its 

[87] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

entire length, was more or less of an open ditch 
until the year 1671. On the other hand, its date 
must have been prior to the year 1676, for in that 
year the canal disappeared entirely, having then 
been filled up and leveled over; and in the same 
year a slaughter-house was erected at the foot of 
Wall Street which does not appear in this view. 
In this view the Lutheran church is shown as 
situated below Wall Street. As the records of 
the city show that the Lutheran church was with- 
out the gate as late as October 17, 1673, when it 
was ordered removed, we have further evidence 
that the date of the view must have been later 
than 1673; and the fact that the new lot for the 
Lutheran church, being No. 5 in the Company's 
Garden, on Broadway below Wall Street, at the 
present southwest corner of Rector Street, was 
not assigned to the Lutherans until May 26, 1674, 
would indicate the date of the view as late as the 
fall of that year. 

From all these facts it seems fair to conclude 
that this view was made just previous to the prov- 
ince passing finally into the possession of the 
English, and that it is the last representation of 
our city under the Dutch administration. 



[88] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 




o far as we are at present in- 
formed, the first publisher of 
copperplate engravings in this 
part of North America was 
one William Burgis, a man of 
whom not a line is anywhere re- 
corded, and whose name con- 
sequently would have passed 
into oblivion but for the fact that fortunately 
both for him and for us, a few— a very few— of 
his productions remain. Thej^ can all be num- 
bered on the fingers of one hand. 

In the year 1717 William Burgis brought out 
" A South Prospect of ye Flourishing City of 
New York in the Province of New York in 
North America," which is of the liberal dimen- 
sions of six feet three and one-half inches in 

[89] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

length by twenty inches in width when the four 
separate sheets of paper upon which it is printed, 
each twenty inches square, are joined together. 
It is a careful and doubtless an accurate drawing 
made upon the spot: the first view of our city 
engraved within its borders and beyond dispute 
the most interesting and important picture that 
exists of the city of New York. Only one soli- 
tary copy of this engraving so far as we know has 
escaped the ravages of time, to wit, the one of 
which the New York Historical Society is the 
custodian. This is tattered and torn, badly 
frayed at the edges, and the inscription, which 
contained a key to the buildings and other 
objects of interest shown in the picture, has 
been entirely sheared away by some vandal 
hand. 

At page 78 of that gossipy little book, " Wat- 
son's Historic Tales of Olden Time in New York 
City and State," published in 1832, there is the 
following reference to this Burgis " Prospect 
of New York " and to the Map of New York 
City published by William Bradford after a 
survey by James Lyne, in which the author 
curiously confounds these two important publica- 
tions. 

" One of the original Philadelphians— William 
Bradford the first printer of Philadelphia, has 

[90] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

left us a lively picture of the city of New York 
as it stood about the year 1729, being his publica- 
tion from an original survey by James Lyne. 
The one which I have seen (a great rarity consid- 
ered) at the City Commissioners' should be, I 
should think, but a reduced copy, inasmuch as 
the MSS. 'Annals of Philadelphia' show that 
in the year 1721, the son of the above William 
Bradford (named Andrew) advertises in his 
* Mercury ' the sale of a ' curious prospect of 
New York on four sheets of paper, royal size.' 
What an article for an antiquary! " 

Watson's inference that the advertisement in 
Andrew Bradford's " American Weekly Mer- 
cury," Philadelphia, 1721, to which he draws at- 
tention referred to the Bradford Map (which it 
is interesting to learn was considered a rarity 
seventy years ago) is an error on its face, for a 
Map or a " Prospect " of the City in 1729 could 
not well have been offered for sale in 1721. This 
would throw into the shade the achievements of 
the enterprising journalists of the present day, 
for the most that they essay is, the issue of a 
six o'clock evening edition of their papers before 
the hour of noon. The notice in the " Mercury " 
is undoubtedly an advertisement of the " Pros- 
pect of New York in 1717 " by William Burgis, 
which engraving it describes to a nicety. 

[91] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

This engraving was dedicated, with the fulsome 
adulation displayed by dependent and impecuni- 
ous authors and artists towards their high and 
mighty patrons in those days of semi-feudal cus- 
toms and usages, to Governor Hunter, by his 
Excellency's most humble and obedient servant, 
William Burgis. Robert Hunter filled the office 
of governor as acceptably to the people and the 
Assembly, and had as few quarrels and conten- 
tions with them as any other of the vicegerents 
that Queen Anne or the Georges sent to rule over 
their " Provinces of New York, New Jersey and 
Territories depending thereon in America; " but 
the antiquarians at least of this metropolis in 
the century which has just dawned upon it, will 
feel under greater obligations to, and take a live- 
lier interest in, his " very humble servant," Wil- 
liam Burgis, and his art, than they will in Gov- 
ernor Hunter and his state craft. 

This copperplate published by William Burgis 
fell into the hands of one Thomas Bake well, a 
London Map and Print-seller, who unceremoni- 
ously erased the name of Burgis and substituted 
for the dedication to Governor Hunter one to 
Governor George Clinton. Bakewell also made 
a necessary addition to the engraving in order to 
show a semi-circular battery which had been 
thrown out from the straight shore line in front 

[92] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

of the ruins of Whitehall ^ after the Burgis plate 
had been completed. This pirated engraving 
was published by Thomas Bakewell, INIareh 25, 
1746. Only two copies of this engraving are at 
present known. One deposited in that venerable 
institution, The New York Society Library, the 
other in the New York Historical Society, j^re- 
sented to it by William Lib by. Esquire, the for- 
mer partner of the great dry-goods merchant 
whose marble palace on the corner of Fifth Ave- 
nue and Thirty-fourth Street happens to be in 
process of demolition as we pen these lines. 

In 1733, A View of New York by Henry Pop- 
ple, engraved by Henry Toms, appeared among a 
large collection of JNIaps of the British Empire in 
America, and in 1761 a long and narrow folding 
plate, entitled " The South Prospect of the City 
of New York in America," was pubhshed in the 
" London Magazine." Both of these pictures are 
doubtless based upon the Burgis print. There 
are discrepancies here and there, and in the Bur- 
gis " Prospect " the East River is crowded with 
vessels large and small, most of which have gone 
to sea or leastwise vanished out of Popple's pic- 
ture, and they are also conspicuous by their ab- 

* The house built by Governor Thomas Dongan, from which 
Whitehall Street derives its name. It was named Whitehall after 
the London palace of the kings of England from Henry VIII to 
William III. 

[93] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

sence in the engraving in the " London Maga- 
zine." But a number of tell tales are left, notably 
Colonel IVIorris's yacht Fancy turning to 
windward in the extreme right-hand foreground 
of the picture. In the " warfs " for building 
ships, in the Burgis print, a vessel is depicted 
under construction on the stocks. We find it 
cradled there still, and no nearer to completion 
in Popple's View, and again it confronts us in 
the picture in the " London JNIagazine." Half 
a century is a long time for even a slow and 
phlegmatic Dutchman to occupy in the building 
of a^ " Vlieboat " or even in that of a full masted 
" Schip." 

These three engravings, we therefore conclude, 
are in their genesis one and the same, although 
they are dated respectively 1717, 1733 and 1761. 
The city of New York did not make rapid pro- 
gress during the first quarter of the eighteenth 
century. From the year 1700 to 1731 its growth 
was in fact discouragingly slow ; the town almost 
stood still and added only about 2500 to the num- 
ber of its inhabitants (6000 to 8622) in these 
thirty years; so that Burgis's picture answered 
Popple's purpose sufficiently well, but the editors 
of the " London Magazine " strained a point 
when they put it forth as a picture of New York 
in the year of grace 1761, for by that time the 

[94] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

town contained some 15,000 souls and they must 
all have had roofs of some sort to shelter them. 
At the time that Popple's Map and View were 
published " Ye City of New York well scituate 
in Lat. 41/40, North and Long. 74/30 Wt. in 
a good Air " had, as has just been stated, a pop- 
ulation of less than 9000 (whites, negroes and 
red men included), who inhabited 1400 dwell- 
ings, all of which, except the outlying country 
houses with which the farm lands around the 
town were dotted, lay below the " Common," now 
the City Hall Park. Broadway was paved with 
cobble stones and planted on each side with a 
row of shade trees from Bowling Green to 
Maiden Lane; above that point it speedily as- 
sumed the aspect of a country road, and where 
St. Paul's Chapel — which was not erected until 
1764 — now rears its graceful spire, fields of 
grain bent their golden heads in obeisance to the 
summer wind. " King's Farm " (the Trinity 
Church property granted to that religious body 
by Lord Cornbury in 1705) stretched in an 
unbroken expanse northward and westward to 
the banks of the " lordly Hudson," and when, 
after divine service, the congregation streamed 
forth from the open doors of the small square 
structure at the head of Wall Street, in which 
Trinity's parishioners worshipped from 1697 

195] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

to 1735, no building obstructed the view of 
the " Great River of the North," flowing not more 
than a bow-shot's length away, clear and unpol- 
luted onward to its union with the sea. " Very 
pleasantly situated on the banks of Hudson's 
river " was the *' English Church " of Trinity in 
1733, for no street was as yet laid out along the 
North River shore, and there were only four 
docks upon it, all in the neighborhood of Cort- 
landt Street, which in this same year (1733) 
was first opened by the owners of the land and 
registered as a public street. 

On the east side, the town had grown with 
more rapidity, and the start it then secured in 
advance of the section which looked out upon the 
continent, it has ever since maintained. There 
were wharfs and " keys " along the East River 
water front (which was then defined by Water 
Street) from Whitehall all the way to Beekman 
Street, and the streets were laid out as far as 
" Frankford " and " Cherry," and around but not 
through Beekman's Swamp, all of which tract of 
land had recently been sold to Roosevelt for one 
hundred pounds. Here in this marshy ground 
the tanners of the city sank their pits after they 
had been ousted from "The Shoemaker's Land," ^ 

^ A tract of land bounded very nearly by Nassau, Ann, and 
William streets, and Maiden Lane. 

[96] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

and the curriers and leather dealers established 
in one abiding place the only business in this city 
that has not shifted its location again and again 
within the last one hundred and fifty years. All 
other trades have been nomadic, wanderers over 
the face of the island. Only the money-changers 
and the leather trade have clung tenaciously to 
their original haunts and homes. 

From the " Common " started the highroad to 
Boston and Albany, winding its way for a dis- 
tance along the present Bowery, then traversing 
the island diagonally and crossing the Harlem 
River at Kingsbridge. Over this highway the 
mail was carried weekly in summer, fortnightly 
in winter, on horseback if the condition of the 
road permitted, otherwise on foot. A stage was 
first started in 1732 to run to Boston once a month 
and was, so our City Guide, Goodrich, affirms, 
fourteen days on the journey, but the statement 
appears incredible. There was a weekly post to 
Philadelphia which consumed three days in mak- 
ing the journey. We have mightily changed all 
that. 

Bowling Green was laid out in 1733, and was 
in reality the only public pleasure ground the 
city then possessed, for the " Common " al- 
though recognized long before this time as pubHc 
property, having been ceded to the Corporation of 

[97] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

the City of New York by Governor Dongan in 
1686, was an unenclosed and neglected waste, 
used principally as a cow pasture and a dumping 
ground for refuse, although bonfires, illumina- 
tions and gatherings of the people took place 
there from time to time. 

The city of our great grandsires was a low- 
roofed one. The houses were at most but three 
stories in height besides the dormer windowed 
attic. Those remaining of the Dutch period— 
built of yellow-tinted Holland brick— were many 
of them peak-roofed and stood with their gable 
ends to the street. These gables tapered to the 
top by a succession of steps, the pinnacle of which 
was frequently surmounted by a weather-cock 
which " veered with every breeze and battled with 
the wind." The heads of the anchoring irons in 
these gables were occasionally fashioned into the 
numerals which denoted the date of the erection 
of the building. 

Our local historians tell us that one of the finest 
residences in the city at this period was that of 
Stephen Delancy on the west side of Broadway, 
a short distance above Trinity Church. This 
building was probably a typical one of the Eng- 
lish style of domestic architecture which is de- 
scribed as being " plain, but strong and neat." 
One of its features was an " outlook " or balcony 

[98] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

on the roof, which was either shingled with white 
" fir " tiles, as they were called, or else covered 
with slate. The materials used in construction 
were wood, stone and brick. The plague of the 
soft and friable Connecticut free stone had not 
yet fallen upon the city it was destined in such 
large measure to disfigure. 

Aside from the City Hall in Wall Street, the 
most conspicuous buildings were the churches. 
" Trinity " on the site of the present edifice. The 
" Eglise du St. Esprit " ^ in Pine Street, to which 
the French Huguenots of New Rochelle jour- 
neyed in the night time on foot, " singing the 
hymns of Clement Marot by the way." The 
Presbyterian Church in Wall Street where Jona- 
than Edwards preached for the space of eight 
months, and the buildings belonging to the Re- 
formed Protestant Dutch Church, the primitive 
religious denomination in New York City and the 
one which held precedency over all others until the 
English occupation. 

The Old Dutch Church in the Fort which had 
been standing for nearly a century was still in 
existence in 1733, but after the surrender to the 
British in 1664, it was known as the King's 
Chapel and Church of England services were 

^ On Pine Street below Nassau, the burial ground running back 
to Cedar Street. Dimensions of the building 50 x 77 feet. 

[99] 

LofC. 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

statedly held there. In 1741 it was destroyed by 
fire and not rebuilt. 

The Dutch Church in Garden Street, now Ex- 
change Place, known as the Old or South Church 
after the erection of the one in Nassau Street, 
stood in the centre of a carefully cultivated gar- 
den, " imposed in all the formal stiffness of the 
cut box and trimmed cedar " of the gardens of 
the Fatherland, in the native tongue of which the 
church services were conducted. The Dutch lan- 
guage was still in common use in 1733, not only 
in the pulpits of the Collegiate Church, but also 
in the market places of the city, and services in 
the former were conducted solely in the Holland 
tongue down to the year 1764. After that date 
it was alternated with the EngHsh language. 

When the Garden Street Church was first 
erected in 1693, at a cost of 64,178 guilders, in 
what was then known as " Garden Alley," ad- 
jacent to the orchard belonging to Elizabeth, 
widow of Domine Drisius,^ the location was ob- 
jected to by some as being too far out of town. 
Our wonderment at this protest ceases when we 
read the following advertisement in Bradford's 
" New York Gazette " of March 18th to 25th, 

* Colleague pastor, with Megapolensis the younger, of the Colle- 
giate Reformed Dutch Church in the City of New York from 
1652-1C71. 

[100] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

1734, which indicates the rural character of Wall 
Street and its vicinity at this period in our city's 
history : 

The House, Store-house and Garden of Benj^ D'har- 
riet, situate in Wall Street in this City is to be Sold, as 
also the Household Goods therein, at reasonable Rates. 
There are also several Lots of Ground in John Street 
on the West corner of Gold Street (formerly the Garden 
of Mr. John Outman) whoever inclines to buy the whole 
or any part of the same, may apply to the said Benjamin 
D'harriet who will dispose of the said premises on rea- 
sonable Terms. 

The New or Middle Dutch Church which was 
opened for worship in 1729 stood surrounded by 
its gravej^ard and burial vaults on Nassau Street 
between Liberty and Cedar on the site now oc- 
cupied by The INIutual Life Insurance Company's 
fine building. This church was " a most sub- 
stantial edifice 100 feet long and 70 feet wide with 
a good steeple and bell." An engraving of this 
building inscribed to the Honourable Rip van 
Dam, President of his Majesty's Council, was 
published shortly after its completion by the same 
William Burgis who issued the View of New 
York in 1717, and only one copy of this engrav- 
ing is known. There is in fact no print bearing 

[101] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

the name of William Burgis of which more than 
one copy, so far as we are aware, remains. 

The value of real estate in New York in 1733 
appears to have been so inconsiderable that the 
prominent merchant ship-builder and politician, 
Rip van Dam (who held among other offices the 
exalted one of Governor of the Province in the in- 
terregnum between the death of Governor Mont- 
gomerie and the arrival of Governor Cosby), to 
whom Burgis inscribed his plate of the Middle 
Dutch Church, petitioned for and was given a 
gore of land at the present intersection of Liberty 
Street (formerly Crown) and Maiden Lane (for- 
merly the JMaiden's path) of 103 feet in length, 
for the nominal sum of 10 shillings, on the ground 
that it was of no use to any one else but him. 

At what was heralded abroad as a great sale 
of lots near the Custom House in Dock Street 
(now Pearl) east of Whitehall, held May 6, 
1732, the seven lots advertised brought a little 
under 200 pounds sterhng apiece; the size of the 
lots is not given, but if they were situated on the 
South side of Dock Street, as the description 
would indicate, they were of small dimensions, as 
the entire block lying east of and adjacent to 
Whitehall measures on the Bradford map only 
about 50 by 100 feet. The property sold may 
have included the Old Market Place or Strand, 

[ 102] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

as it was called ; if so, it was probably at the time 
one of the most desirable business locations in the 
City. 

The King's Arms Tavern on Broad Street op- 
posite the Old Exchange, kept by a Mrs. Steel, 
was the principal hostelry of the town in 1733, but 
evidently there has never been any dearth of 
places where liquid refreshments could be found 
in this " happy and peaceful little Burg," for it 
is recorded that at as remote a period as the year 
1679 Francis Romboult, Mayor, licensed no less 
than sixteen persons to sell wines, which we pre- 
sume included Dutch Schnapps and rum which 
we read in " Dankers and Sluyters Journal," 
1679, " was everywhere." We have none of 
Romboult 's licenses to transcribe, but in lieu 
thereof we copy one granted in 1785 by Mayor 
James Duane, the phraseology of which is doubt- 
less similar to that in those issued by his prede- 
cessors in office. The phrasing of legal documents 
for some reason not apparent to the layman's 
mind does not greatly vary from age to age. 



New York 



City of 

Be It remembered, that on the first Day of March 
1785 personally appeared before me, James Duane Es- 
quire Mayor of the said City, Mary Clark — Innholder, 

[103] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

and acknowledged herself indebted unto the People of 
the State of New York, in the penal sum of Fifty 
Pounds Lawful Money of the faid State, to be levied of 
her Goods and Chattels, Lands and Tenements, for the 
Use of the People of the faid State, if Failure fhall be 
made in the Performance of the Conditions following: 

Whereas the faid Mary Clark — on the Day of the 
Date hereof, hath obtained a Licence to keep an Inn 
or Tavern for retailing ftrong Liquors in her Dwelling- 
House, in the faid City, from the Date of the faid Li- 
cense untill the firft Day of March next ensuing. 

Now THE CONDITION of this Recoguizance is fucli. 
That if the faid Mary Clark — do not during the Time 
that she fhall keep an Inn or Tavern, keep a diforderly 
Inn or Tavern, or fuifer or permit any Cock-fighting or 
Gaming to be practised within the Inn or Tavern by 
her kept, or within any Out-House, Yard or Garden 
belonging thereto: Then this Recognizance to be void, 
elfe to remain in full Force 

Taken and acknowledged the 
Day and Year above written 
Before me 

Jas. Duane. 

Fraunces' famous Tavern on the Southeast 
corner of Pearl and Broad Streets, built in the 
early part of the eighteenth century by the De- 

[104] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

lancey family, and still standing— a building 
around which cluster more interesting historical 
associations than attach to any other pile of brick 
and mortar in our city, did not begin its career 
as a public house until 1762, when the property 
was acquired by Samuel Francis and opened as 
a Tavern, called the Quefens Head, under the sign 
of Queen Charlotte. Previously it had been oc- 
cupied as a residence by Colonel Joseph Robinson, 
and then as a store, as is shown by the following 
advertisement in Hugh Gaine's " ]\Iercury," 
May 28, 1757. 

Delancy Robinson & Co. have removed their store to 
the house wherein the late Col. Joseph Robinson lived, 
being the corner house next the Royal Exchange where 
they continue to sell all sorts of European and East India 
Goods, etc. etc. 

The first theatre established in New York, 
says Chronicler Goodrich in his compact, very 
useful, but not always implicitly reliable little 
" Picture of New York and Strangers Guide " 
to the Commercial Metropolis of the United 
States (New York, 1828) , was in an old building 
on Crugers Wharf, near Old Slip, but the first 
regular theatre in New York, we are informed by 
another historian, was erected in 1750, and was 
a stone building in the vicinity of the Dutch 

[105] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

Church near Maiden Lane. Joseph N. Ireland's 
statement of this matter in his " Annals of the 
New York Stage " which we quote below is prob- 
ably the most reliable. 

An advertisement of George Talbot, Mer- 
chant, in Bradford's "Gazette," of October, 1733, 
directs inquiries to be made at his store, " next 
door to the Play-House." No other reference to 
the drama in New York at this early period is to 
be found. We hear nothing more of the Theatre 
until February 26, 1750, when in the columns 
of the " New York Gazette," revived in the 
" Weekly Post Boy," published by James Parker, 
appeared the following editorial notice : "Last 
week arrived here a company of comedians from 
Philadelphia who we hear have taken a conve- 
nient room for their purpose in one of the build- 
ings lately belonging to the Honorable Rip van 
Dam, Esq., deceased, in Nassau Street, where 
they intend to perform as long as the season lasts, 
provided they meet with suitable encouragement." 

This building— Ireland states — was situated on 
the east side of Nassau Street (formerly Kip 
Street) between John Street and Maiden Lane 
on lots now (1866) known by the numbers 64 
and 66. 

The advertisement of George Talbot, in Brad- 
ford's " Gazette," to which Ireland refers, shows 

[106] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

him to have been a dealer in a curious variety of 
commodities. " All sorts of Household goods, 
viz.: Beds, Chairs, Tables, Chest of Drawers, 
Looking Glasses, Andirons and Pictures, as also 
several sorts of Drugs and Medicines, also a 
Negro girl about 16 years of age, has had the 
small-pocc and is fit for the town or country." 

For amusements, the men of 1733 had their 
weekly evening clubs, and for the entertainment 
of both sexes there were concerts and assemblies, 
balls and sleighing parties in the winter, ex- 
cursions on the water and fishing parties in the 
summer. The church calendar was thickly stud- 
ded with festivals and fast days, and there were 
also numerous secular hoHdays throughout the 
year. In the half Dutch, half English town of 
our ancestors, it was necessary that the high days 
of both England and Holland should be duly ob- 
served and fittingly commemorated. 

For the greater part of the year 1733, there was 
but one paper, and that a weekly publication, to 
furnish the inhabitants of New York City with 
news, for the first issue of John Peter Zenger's 
" Weekly Gazette " did not make its appearance 
until October, 1733. Bradford's " Weekly Ga- 
zette," first issued in 1725 on a half sheet of fools- 
cap (small folio) paper, had risen at the time of 
which we write to the dignity of a whole sheet of 

[107] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

foolscap or four pages. It was filled mostly with 
European news three to six months old, flat, stale 
and unprofitable reading to us now, but a corner in 
his columns was allotted by Bradford to Custom 
House entries, advertisements of, and rewards of- 
fered for runaway slaves, and notices of bondmen 
for sale at public vendue, sales of real estate, etc. 
These items of local news hold a mirror up to the 
times and life of the day and as such are and 
always will be of interest to the student of history 
and the antiquary. 

The Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief 
of the Province of New York, New Jersey and 
the Territories thereon depending in America, 
Vice-Admiral of the same and Colonel of His 
Majesty's Army (as his imposing string of titles 
ran) , at this time, was William Cosby, who held 
oflSce from 1732 to 1736. Robert Lurting, whose 
house near the Ferry Stairs we find advertised for 
sale in Bradford's " Gazette " for December, 
1735, was Mayor of the City, a position which he 
occupied for eleven years. The office of Recorder 
was filled by Francis Harison, and the Alderman 
and assistants who served in 1733-1734 were the 
following : 

DOCK WARD 

Alderman Assistant 

John Cruger John Moore 

[108] 



NEW YORK IN 1733 

WEST WARD 

Alderman Assistant 

Harmanns Vangelder John Chambers 

SOUTH WARD 

Frederick Philipse Isaac De Peyster 

NORTH WARD 

Anthony Rutgers Garrett Roos 

EAST WARD 

John Roosevelt Petrus Rutgers 

MONTGOMERIE WARD 

Johannes Hardenbrook Abel Hardenbrook 

OUT WARD 

Gerardus Stuyvesant Thomas Dekey 

The preponderance of Dutch names in this list 
would apj)ear to signify that although the flag 
of Oranje Boven had long ceased to wave over 
the Fort at the Bowling Green, the voices of the 
descendants of the Hollanders were still potent 
in the Councils of the Corporation. 

This early period in our city's history, this un- 
sophisticated age, when, as Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker recites, every well regulated family always 
rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to 
bed at sundown, was not a golden one, nor was 

[109] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

the country an Arcadia. The people had troubles 
a-plenty. Epidemics of small-pox and yellow 
fever ravaged their homes at times, numerous 
fire alarms in their highly combustible town, and 
dread of negro uprisings disturbed their midnight 
slumbers, but they kept the prosaic tenor of their 
way. A frugal, industrious, home-loving and 
Sabbath-keeping community, there were none 
very wealthy among them to excite the envy of 
their neighbors, although we are told that Fred- 
erick Philipse by his enterprise and thrift added 
to the wealth which he inherited, and became pass- 
ing rich, and that Rip van Dam and a few other 
magnates were well-to-do and rode in their own 
chaises. What clumsy and inconvenient vehicles 
they were, he who runs may read in Burgis's pic- 
ture of the " New Dutch Church," for there, in 
the foreground, is supposed to be depicted the 
identical coach in which Rip van Dam took his 
airings and rumbled in much state, but we im- 
agine with only a modicum of comfort over the 
cobble-stone pavements of the New York of 1733. 



[110] 



CITY OF NEW YORK BEFORE THE 
REVOLUTIONARY WAR 




NT 1778, during "the present 
unhappy contest between 
Great Britain and her colo- 
nies," to use the words on its 
title-page, William Russell's 
" History of America " was 
published in London in two 
volumes, with illustrations. 
In the first volume there appears at page 270 an 
unsigned plate with the title " South West View 
of Fort George with the City of New York." It 
is this that Mr. French has reproduced in his line 
engraving forming the subject of this paper, the 
size having been considerably reduced, for the 
Russell plate measures 8f inches by 5f inches. 
Russell's History must have been partly writ- 
[111] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

ten many years before its publication, for the 
author refers to " the late peace " in speaking of 
that of 1763, and the illustrations, by no means 
always recent, as we shall see in this case, had 
probably been gathered long before 1778. In- 
deed, it is probable that the revolt of the colonies 
merely hastened the publication of a work that 
had been begun soon after British supremacy was 
acknowledged throughout that region of ex- 
traordinary interest which had been the scene of 
such stirring events as those of Louisburg, Ti- 
conderoga, Duquesne, and Quebec. 

The view shown on this plate is known as Car- 
witham's because of its close correspondence with 
and undoubted derivation from a larger print, 
measuring about 16i inches by 10^ inches, signed 
by J. Carwitham, an English engraver. 

The Carwitham plate was used with different 
titles by successive publishers, and both colored 
and uncolored prints exist. An excellent copy 
of the earliest form of the print, colored, and with 
the imprint " A View of Fort George with the 
City of New York from the S. W., Printed for 
Carington Bowles, Map and Print Seller, at No. 
69 in St. Paul's Churchyard, London," is in the 
collection of Mr. Richard T. H. Halsey. A spe- 
cimen of a later issue, colored, and called " A 
Southwest View of the City of New York in 

[112] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

North America," and printed for Bowles & Car- 
ver, No. 69 St. Paul's Churchyard, is in the pos- 
session of Mr. William Loring Andrews. A 
copy of this issue, also colored, owned by Mr. 
Edwin B. Holden, is of special interest because 
the flags displayed on the fort and ships, while 
engraved with the crosses of the Union Jack, 
have been colored over with the Stars and Stripes. 
On the Carwitham plate the spires and cupolas 
are numbered from left to right, but unfortu- 
nately the key to which the numbers refer is not 
known to exist. 

Carwitham also did a view of Boston, of which 
at least two issues are in existence. The earlier, 
called " South East View of the Great Town 
of Boston in North America," was printed for 
Carington Bowles; and the later, called " South 
East View of the City of Boston in North 
America," w^as printed for Bowles & Carver. 

As evidence that the copperplates of these old 
views were put to hard service, it may be said that 
the later issues of the Carwitham prints, referred 
to above as printed for Bowles & Carver, must 
have been published after 1793, for in that year, 
according to the London city directories, Bowles 
& Carver succeeded Carington Bowles at No. 69 
St. Paul's Churchyard. 

The date of the publication of the first of the 

[113] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

Carwitham views of New York is uncertain. 
Carwitham himself, according to Joseph Strutt's 
" Biographical Dictionary of Engravers," flour- 
ished about 1730, executing a considerable num- 
ber of book-plates, prints, and other work, some 
bearing date as early as 1723, and some as late 
as 1741. These facts alone would be sufficient to 
justify us in assigning to this view of New York 
a much earlier date than has been heretofore 
given it, owing to its publication in Russell's his- 
tory in 1778; but in addition to this there is in- 
ternal evidence that is quite sufficient to lead us 
independently to the conclusion that the view it- 
self represents the city of New York as it w^as 
about 1740. 

In the " Memorial History of Boston," Vol- 
ume II, page 531, is a discussion of the date of 
the original of the Carwitham views of Boston, 
leading to the conclusion, based on a study of the 
architecture and a comparison with other prints, 
that it must have been prior to 1743. 

In like manner internal evidence of the early 
date of the New York picture is afforded by the 
buildings shown, most of which can be definitely 
identified by their architecture. The view, it will 
be remembered, is from the southwest. On the 
left is Trinity Church, with its spire one hundred 
and seventy-five feet in height, facing the river, 

[114] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

being the structure built in 1696, and enlarged 
in 1737, which stood until destroyed by the great 
fire of 1776. The small spire to the right should 
be more detached, as in the Carwitham print, 
being that of the Lutheran Church that stood on 
a plot of ground at the south corner of Broadway 
and Rector Street. Next on the right is the Mid- 
dle Dutch Churcb, which stood on the east side of 
Nassau Street, between Cedar and Liberty 
streets, and faced the north. The ground it oc- 
cupied is now covered by the building of the Mu- 
tual Life Insurance Company. Then the French 
Church is shown, which stood on the north side of 
Pine Street east of Nassau Street. The cupola 
of the City Hall is shown next on the right. This 
building stood at the head of Broad Street where 
the front of the Sub-Treasury building now is, 
and extended nearly to the center of Wall Street. 
Still fui'ther to the right is the Dutch Church in 
Garden Street, occupying a plot of ground on 
Exchange Place just east of Broad Street, now 
part of the site of the Mills Building. At the 
corner of the fort is seen the secretary's office, and 
adjoining it are the barracks. The tower on the 
right has been identified as that of the chapel in 
the fort, through its close resemblance to the 
structure shown in the view engraved on the mar- 
gin of Popple's map, published in 1733, and 

[115] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

there designated " The Chappel," and also by 
reason of its position at the exact spot in the fort 
which, on the Bradford map of the city of New 
York (1731), is indicated by a reference letter 
and key as the site of "King's Chapel built 1694." 
No such structure is shown in the Kitchin view on 
the margin of the Ratzer map (1766), and this 
accords with what we would expect, for William 
Smith, the historian, writing in 1757 of the fort, 
says: "At the South end there was formerly a 
chapel but this was burnt down in the negro con- 
spiracy of the Spring 1741." 

The identification of the buildings enables us 
to fix very closely the date of the view, for the 
Middle Dutch Church and the chapel in the fort 
are both shown, and the former was not built until 
1731, and the latter was destroyed in 1741. Be- 
tween these dates, therefore, the view must have 
been drawn. Other indications are not wanting. 
The Bradford map (1731) shows a general size 
of the city and a condition of surroundings and 
shore-line near the fort and Trinity Church cor- 
responding very nearly with this view, while the 
Montresor map (1765) shows the land filled in 
and streets laid out between Trinity Church and 
the river, and dock improvements just above the 
church. Again, in this view between Trinity 
Church and the City Hall there is no spire promi- 

[116] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

nent enough to be the spire, one hundred and 
forty-five feet high, of the Presbyterian Church 
built in 1748 on the north side of Wall Street be- 
tween Broadway and Nassau Street. One fur- 
ther indication leads us to fix the date still more 
closely, as the spire of Trinity Church promi- 
nently shown in the view is probably that of the 
remodeled structure of 1737. Hence the date of 
the view must be accepted as between 1737 and 
1741. 

When the original sketch of this view was made 
the artist was probably on the deck of a ship lying 
in the North River almost due west from the pres- 
ent Aquarium and not more than five hundred 
feet from the present sea wall. It is to be remem- 
bered that almost the whole of Battery Park is an 
encroachment on the original river-bed, and that 
the old shore-line is now closely followed by 
Greenwich and State streets. The small dock 
shown in the picture stood almost exactly where 
the Battery Place station of the elevated railroad 
now is. 

That this was the point of view may be con- 
fii'med, if upon an accurate map of the lower part 
of the city and the bay a mark be made at the 
spot above indicated and radial lines be drawn 
through the several sites of the various buildings 
above named. These structures will then be 

[117] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

found to arrange themselves in the order shown 
in the picture, and the angles between the lines 
will correspond exactly to the spaces between the 
buildings in the view itself. 

The identification of the buildings is confirmed 
by this test and further by the present street lev- 
els. Broadway at Trinity Church is thirty-four 
feet above datum. Nassau Street at the IVIutual 
Life Building is thirty-four feet three inches 
above datum, while Wall Street at the Sub- 
Treasury is twelve feet lower, and State Street, 
near the site of the fort, is but eleven feet above 
datum. These elevations correspond closely to 
the relative prominence of the several buildings. 

Compared with this Russell print the Car- 
witham is much the better picture, though in bal- 
ance and proportion the two are closely alike. 
The latter gives far more detail and shows many 
more buildings both north and east of the fort. 
The spire identified above as that of the Lutheran 
Church is clearly shown as detached and remote 
from Trinity Church. The impossible back- 
ground of hills in the Russell view is not shown in 
Carwitham's, and must have been arbitrarily 
added by the artist to relieve the bareness of the 
derived print and make up somewhat for the ab- 
sence of much of the detail of the original picture. 

The city of New York in 1740 extended north 
[118] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

about as far as Reade Street and east to Cath- 
erine Street, though the upper portions were, of 
course, much less closely settled than the lower, 
even then. Carwitham has drawn it as an attrac- 
tive, peaceful village. But we should err in ima- 
gining the New York of that day as a sleepy 
place. William Smith, an almost contemporary 
historian already quoted, has enabled us to see 
what a veritable bee-hive of industry, as he himself 
calls it, the place was. Its population was almost 
twelve thousand. Most of the free inliabitants of 
the city were merchants, shop-keepers, or trades- 
men, active and industrious, and making the most 
of the city's natural advantages. In lieu of a har- 
bor the present East River afforded a " safe and 
commodious road," facing which were docks for 
the shipping, that to the number of two hundred 
and fifty or three hundred sail in each year cleared 
for the various ports of Europe and America. 
The export trade to the West Indies, embracing 
cereals, fruits, lumber, fm's, live stock, dairy 
products, and meats, was large. Of flour alone, 
over eighty thousand barrels per annum were ex- 
ported. So important was this branch of indus- 
try that to preserve its credit there were appointed 
officers to inspect and brand every cask before 
exportation. While perhaps coals were not car- 
ried to Newcastle, certainly flax-seed in quanti- 

[119] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

ties was sent to Ireland in exchange for linens. 
Felt hats were sent in large number to the 
West Indies until British manufacturers in- 
duced Parliament to prohibit the exportation. 
With other places than Great Britain the balance 
of trade was in favor of New York, but the an- 
nual importation of dry-goods from England, 
amounting to over one hundred thousand pounds, 
obliged the colonists " to betake themselves to all 
possible arts to make remittances to the British 
merchants." 

The social life of the city took the form of even- 
ing clubs for men, and concerts and assembhes for 
the ladies. Of the latter. Smith says: " They are 
comely and dress well, and scarce any of them 
have distorted shapes. Tinctured with Dutch 
education, they manage their families with be- 
coming parsimony, good providence, and singular 
neatness." But he unkindly adds, " There is 
nothing they so generally neglect as reading, 
and indeed all arts for the improvement of the 
mind." 

Indeed, education generally seems not to have 
been of a high grade. The schools were not good, 
for the instructors were incompetent. Speech 
was corrupt, and, in public and private, there 
were abundant evidences of a low standard of 
taste in thought and language. Slavery flour- 

[ 120] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

ished, quite one sixth of the population being 
blacks. 

In religion the Episcopalians, Dutch Re- 
formed, and English Presbyterians formed a ma- 
jority. The place of worship of the first-named 
was, of course. Trinity Church. It then faced the 
river, as shown in our view, and is described as 
having " a large cemetery on each side enclosed in 
the front by a painted paled fence. Before it a 
long walk is railed off from the Broadway, the 
pleasantest street of any in the whole town." The 
church was burned in the great ftre of 1776. 
The Episcopalians, though but one fifteenth of 
the population, were of considerable influence, but 
their claim of the establishment of the church here 
as in England was stoutly denied by the " dissen- 
ters," and occasioned many serious arguments 
and misunderstandings. The rector of Trinity 
Church at this time was Rev. William Vesey, a 
graduate of Harvard College, who had been or- 
dained in England and instituted rector of the 
parish on Christmas day in 1697- His induction 
and the services of the parish for some time there- 
after were held, by the favor of the Dutch Re- 
formed Church, in their Garden Street edifice 
pending the completion of the English church. 
The rector was by reason of his personality a man 
of great prominence in the life of the city and 

[121] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

colony, and held the appointment of Commissary 
of the Bishop of London in the Province of New 
York. He died July 11, 1746, having been at 
the head of the parish for nearly half a century. 

The Dutch Reformed congregation at this time 
had two churches in use, both shown in our view 
—the old Garden Street Church and the newer 
Middle Church. The former had been built in 
1693, and up to 1807 was in continuous use as a 
church, except during the Revolution, when it was 
used as a hospital by the British. The Middle 
Church, completed in 1731, was, during the Rev- 
olution, prostituted by the British to the base uses 
of a prison at first, and then quarters for cavalry. 
In 1790 it was restored, and thereafter used as a 
church continuously to 1844, when it was leased 
to the United States government for the post- 
office. The government purchased it in 1861, 
continuing its use as a post-office up to 1875. The 
building was thereafter given over to business 
purposes until 1882, when the Mutual Life In- 
surance Company bought it and demolished it. 
Its bell, brought from Holland in 1731, was hid- 
den during the Revolution and replaced after 
1783, and is now in the church at Fifth Avenue 
and Forty-eighth Street. 

The ministers in charge of the congregation of 
the Dutch churches were two, the colleagues giy- 

[ 122 ] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

ing the name since used to the Collegiate Church. 
Domine Gualterus Du Bois had come in 1699 as 
colleague to Domine Selyns, and when the latter 
died, in 1701, had continued alone until the arrival 
of Rev. Henricus Boel in 1713. Thereafter these 
two worked together for many years, the former 
dying in 1751, and the latter in 1754. They al- 
ternated in charge of the two church buildings, as 
the congregation was considered but one church. 
Services were conducted in the Dutch language 
up to 1764, when, after much serious opposition, 
English was substituted. In character these two 
ministers admirably supplemented each other, 
Domine Du Bois being described as wise and 
amiable, and his colleague as vigorous and some- 
what uncompromising. They were of great 
power and usefulness. 

The City Hall had been erected at the head of 
Broad Street in 1699. It was an oblong, two- 
story structure somewhat like the letter H, with 
peaked roof and dormer windows, and a cupola. 
It contained the common-council room, a court- 
room, jury -room, debtors' prison, fire-engine 
room, and a dungeon for criminals. In the street 
before it were pillory and stocks. In 1740 it was 
the official residence of Mayor John Cruger. 
This is the building that later, in altered form, 
witnessed the inauguration of the first President 

[ 123 ] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

of the United States, and became the seat of gov- 
ernment. In after years it gave place to the 
present Sub-Treasury building. 

The Lutheran Church stood on the west side of 
Broadway, just south of Rector Street. The 
congregation had had an earlier edifice " without 
the gate," but prior to 1684 had been compelled 
to remove it and had erected this one within. 
This appears from the statements made in that 
year in their petition for a confirmation of their 
patent. The building was rebuilt in 1702, but 
the spire must have been added later, for the Bur- 
gis view of 1717 does not show the spire, while 
Thomas Bakewell's edition, in 1746, of the Bur- 
gis view with alterations shows it plainly. The 
structure stood until the fire of 1776. 

The French Church stood on the north side of 
Pine Street, east of Nassau Street, on a lot sev- 
enty-five feet in width, extending through to 
Cedar Street. The building was erected in 1704, 
and had a stone tower surmounted by a cupola 
with bell. It is clearly shown in the Burgis view 
of 1717. The congregation was founded by the 
Huguenots and included many of the most influ- 
ential families in the province at this time. 

Fort George (and this, of nine successive 
names, is the last it was destined to bear) stood be- 
low the Bowling Green on the land now to be used 

[ 124] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

for the new Ciistom-House. There is said to have 
been a paHsade work there as early as 1615. In 
" Wassenaers Historie van Europa," pubhshed 
in Amsterdam from 1621 to 1632, are papers de- 
scriptive of New Netherlands, and in one the 
statement is made that the colony was planted in 
1625 on the Manhates, " where a fort was staked 
out by Master Kryn Frederycke, an engineer." 
Later it is said, " When the fort staked out at 
the Manhates will be completed, it is to be named 
Amsterdam." A further note, in 1628, refers to 
the fort " having four points and faced outside 
entirely with stone, as the walls of sand fall 
down, and are now more compact." 

In 1642-43 the Rev. Isaac Jogues, who had 
been a Jesuit missionary to Canada, was a refu- 
gee in New Amsterdam, having eluded his JVIo- 
hawk captors. His observations during his stay 
were embodied in a sketch written in 1646, 
wherein he describes Fort Amsterdam, at the 
point of the island, as having " four regular bas- 
tions mounted with several pieces of artillery. 
All these bastions and the curtains were in 1643 
but ramparts of earth, most of which had crum- 
bled away, so that the fort could be entered on all 
sides. There were no ditches. There were sixty 
soldiers to garrison the said fort and another 
which they had built still further up against the 

[125] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

incursions of the savages, their enemies. They 
were beginning to face the gates and bastions 
with stone. Within this fort stood a pretty large 
church built of stone, the house of the Governor, 
whom they called Director General, quite neatly 
built of brick, the store house and barracks." Fa- 
ther Jogues notes that " Some mechanics who ply 
their trades are ranged under the fort; all the 
others were exposed to the incursions of the na- 
tives." This peril led the settlers later to range 
their dwellings close to the southern and eastern 
walls of the fort, even overtopping them, and 
thus later affording to Stuyvesant one means of 
explaining his surrender of the fort to the Eng- 
lish, because of the ready base the houses afforded 
for scaling-ladders. 

In 1678 Governor Andros, replying to inqui- 
ries about New York, described, among others, 
" James fFort seated upon a point of New Yorke 
Towne between Hudsons river and ye Sound, its 
a square with stone walls, foure bastions almost 
regular, and in it 46 gunnes mounted and stores 
for service accordingly." 

In 1687 Governor Dongan, in his report to the 
Committee of Trade in the Province of New 
York, states that " At New York there is a forti- 
fication of four bastions built formerly against 
the Indians, of dry stone and earth with sods as 

[126] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

a breastwork, well and pleasantly situated for the 
defense of the harbor. . . . One Flanker, the 
face of the north bastion, and three points of Bas- 
tions and a Coiirlin has been done and are re- 
built by me with lime and mortar and all the rest 
of the Fort pinnd and rough-cast with lime since 
my coming here." JVIost of the guns he found 
dismounted and the breastwork upon the wall so 
moldered away as to need repair. 

Lieutenant-Governor Clarke in 1738 wrote to 
the Board of Trade, describing the fort in its then 
condition, as follows: " In the town of New York 
is an old fort of very little defense, cannon we 
have, but the carriages are good for little, we have 
ball but no powder, nor will the board of ordi- 
nance send any on pretense that a large quantity 
was sent in 1711 for the Canada expedition which 
is 27 year agoe, much of it has for many years 
been trodden under foot in the magazine, the bar- 
rells having been rotten." 

From these descriptions it will be seen that 
the various governors were either unable or not 
anxious to preserve the public works in their 
charge. Indeed, Montresor, describing the fort 
and battery in 1765, states that the latter " was 
constructed at an enormous expense and seems to 
have been intended for profit and form and then 
for defense." The fort continued to be the place 

[127] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

of residence of the governors up to December 
29, 1773, when Governor Tryon's house was 
burned. Thereafter Tryon resided in a house 
outside of the fort, and the fort ceased to be the 
headquarters of the government. At the time of 
which we are writing the fort also contained the 
secretary's office, barracks, and chapel. All were 
burned in the fire started during the negro riots 
in 1741. The barracks were rebuilt, but a new 
secretary's office was constructed outside the fort 
on the present corner of Bowling Green and 
Whitehall Street. Fort George was removed, 
pursuant to an act of the Legislature passed in 
1790, and then consisted of a green bank which 
was sloping and about fourteen feet high, on 
which were erected the walls in about twenty feet 
additional height. In its front, toward the Bowl- 
ing Green, were two apple trees and an old linden 
tree, wliich were about the same height as the 
walls. 

The executive at the head of the government of 
the colony in 1740 was Lieutenant-Governor 
George Clarke, who had been the secretary of the 
province under Governor Cosby at the time of the 
latter's death in 1736, and had then been desig- 
nated to act as governor pending the appoint- 
ment of a successor to Cosby. Clarke continued 
in office until the arrival of Governor George 

[128]' 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

Clinton in 1743, and during his incumbency many 
occurrences showed that even then there smol- 
dered in the minds of the colonists that idea of in- 
dependence that later was fanned into flame. 
The form of government then embraced, besides 
the crown governor, a Council of twelve, also hold- 
ing commissions from the king, and the Assembly 
of twenty-seven representatives chosen by the 
colonists. In 1741 the lieutenant-governor in a 
speech to the popular branch said " that he now 
hoped the House was returning to a sense of duty 
to His Majesty and would make Parliament a 
model of its proceedings ; that this conduct alone 
would remove the jealousy prevailing in Great 
Britain that the colony wished to be emancipated 
from the Crown, and would enable His Majesty 
to pay his own officers and servants, whereby they 
will be re-claimed to their proper dependence." 
And this because the shrewd representatives kept 
a tight hold on the purse-strings, knowing that 
therein lay their only restraint on royal ap- 
pointees. 

It was during Clarke's administration that the 
most determined effort was made by the people 
to secure the enactment of a law providing for 
more frequent elections of representatives. It 
had been the contention of previous governors 
that while the election of representatives was by 

[129] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

the people, the dissolution of the Assembly was a 
royal prerogative. The Legislature that was dis- 
solved in 1737, after Governor Cosby 's death, had 
existed for nine years, and generally the life of 
the House was measured by its subserviency to 
the executive. The new Assembly passed a bill 
for triennial elections, which received the sanction 
of the lieutenant-governor and was forwarded to 
England strongly recommended to royal favor. 
But the committee of the Privy Council advised 
a veto and the measure failed. Subsequently, in 
1743, an act limiting the life of the Assembly 
to seven years was finally passed. 

Yet while these and kindred questions kept up 
a mild excitement, the general tone of the life 
was quiet, frugal, and simple. Smith says the 
New Yorkers of those days were " not so gay a 
people as their neighbors at Boston and several 
of the Southern Colonies," nor was there any 
great inequality in wealth, " as is common in Bos- 
ton." How great the change now, not only rel- 
atively to the Hub, but actually, as well! We 
are now gay even to the extent of making jests 
about our serious New England neighbors, and 
inequality of wealth now exists such as is impos- 
sible until the right-hand column contains nine 
figures. 

It is difficult to realize that out of the simplicity 

[130] 



BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

of those days has grown the rushing, complicated 
life of to-day. It is almost impossible to believe 
that the city that then had annual revenues of 
£750 has produced Tammany Hall. The aspect 
of Carwitham's New York suggests no such sky- 
line as to-day's, made up of towering office-build- 
ings that dwarf to insignificance even the ambi- 
tious business structures of fifty years ago and 
overtop the spire of Trinity itself. Not growth 
but transformation has produced the twentieth- 
century New York. Carwitham drew for us only 
the chrysalis. 



[131] 



NEW YORK IN 1801 




HE picture presented to us 
shows little with which we are 
familiar on either side of the 
river. The fishermen on the 
Long Island shore would now 
find small opportunity to pur- 
sue their vocation in front of 
the warehouses, amid the puf- 
fing tugs and steamers, and beneath the lofty 
bridge which occupy the then vacant space, while 
their vision would be surprised by the equally im- 
pressive towering buildings and massive wharves 
which have replaced the old structures of New 
York. Even the few church spires which then 
formed such prominent features of the landscape, 
and still remain in the lower part of the city, are 
so dwarfed by their surroundings as to be barely 
discernible. But at that time these were so con- 

[133] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

spiciious as to be the first objects to attract our 
attention. First, and most obvious to the sight, is 
Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street, its tall 
steeple dominating all the others, being on the 
building erected in 1788 to replace the one de- 
stroyed by fire during the Revolution, to be, in its 
turn, taken down to make room for the present 
stately edifice consecrated in May, 1846. The 
spire next on the right I imagine to belong to 
the Presbyterian Church in Wall Street, near 
Broadway, which was built in 1719, and enlarged 
in 1748. Rebuilt on a greater scale in 1810, it 
was destroyed by fire in 1834, restored the follow- 
ing year, and occupied until 1844, when it was 
taken down, the congregation having acquired a 
new site on Fifth Avenue, between Eleventh and 
Twelfth streets, which it still occupies. Imme- 
diately to the north of the Wall Street Presby- 
terian Church stood the Scotch Covenanters 
Church, on the south side of Cedar Street, and its 
steeple is probably the northerly one of the three 
clustered together, but the latter may be that of 
the Middle Dutch Church on Nassau and Cedar 
streets, on the ground now occupied by the 
building of The JNIutual Life Insurance Com- 
pany of New York. Next, to the right, appears 
the spire of the North Dutch Church, completed 
and opened for public worship on May 25, 1769, 

[ 134] 



NEW YORK IN 1801 

a fine stone building measuring one hundred by 
seventy feet, on the corner of Wilham and Fulton 
streets. Almost up to this time the services in the 
Dutch Reformed churches had been held in the 
mother tongue, but the increasing use of the Eng- 
lish language had become so marked, especially 
among the younger people, that it became neces- 
sary to make a change, and in 1764 English was 
used in the JVliddle Church, to the great wrath of 
the elderly conservatives. Dutch, however, con- 
tinued the language in the Sovith or Garden 
Street Church until 1803. 

Passing on to the right, the next tall spire is 
that of St. Paul's Church, erected in 1766, where, 
during the days of the English occupation of the 
city, Major Andre, Lord Howe, and Sir Guy 
Carleton attended the services, and with them the 
English midshipman who afterward became Wil- 
liam IV. Immediately after his inauguration as 
first President of the United States, Washington, 
together with all the civil and military dignitaries 
who had graced the occasion, repaired thither for 
public worship, and during his residence in the city 
he retained a pew there, and constantly attended 
the sei'vices. It has frequently since been the 
scene of stately ceremonies, not the least imposing 
of which were the funeral services held under the 
auspices of the Sons of the Revolution in honor 

[135] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

of the late President McKinley, on the 18th of 
September, 1901. 

The eye next rests upon the Brick Church then 
standing at the corner of Beekman and Nassau 
streets, upon ground which is now partly occu- 
pied by the building of the New York Times, and 
which was built in 1768 in the fields, and quite out 
of town. During the Revolution it was used as 
a hospital, but restored to ecclesiastical purposes 
thereafter, and continued as a place of worship 
until 1854, when the congregation removed to 
tlieir present building at the corner of Fifth Ave- 
nue and Thirty-seventh Street. It remained for 
years a branch of the Presbyterian Church in 
Wall Street, and the formal separation and its 
erection to the dignity of an independent church 
did not occur until 1809. 

Last on our list towers the spire of St. George's 
Church on the Chapel Hill, at the corner of 
Beekman and Cliff streets, built in 1748 as a 
chapel of Trinity Church, and made an indepen- 
dent organization in 1809. In 1846, Mr. Peter 
G. Stuyvesant gave the church some lots of 
gromid on Rutherford Place and wSixteenth 
Street, sufficient for a new church and rectory, 
and the parish erected buildings on that site 
which it still occupies. 

This brief review of the church steeples shown 

[136] 



NEW YORK IN 1801 

in our picture makes it clear that our fathers did 
not lack opportunities for religious instruction 
and worship, and justifies the remark of Mr. 
Felix Oldboy when he terms the New York of 
that day " the paradise of churches." 

Having considered the ecclesiastical buildings 
with sufficient fullness, we may properly turn our 
attention to the more worldly features of the 
landscape, but I cannot attempt with any confi- 
dence to identify the other buildings shown. I 
am inclined to think that the high roof, to the 
right of Trinity and the two other steeples, covers 
the new City, afterward Federal, Hall, which 
stood on the north side of Wall Street, opposite 
Broad Street extending across what is now Nas- 
sau Street, but I do not venture to speak with 
certainty. Fraunce's Tavern, the City Hotel, the 
Tontine Building, the Golden Hill Inn, and many 
other landmarks of the old city, are, doubtless, 
there, but cannot be recognized. South Street 
had not then been reclaimed from the river, and 
Water Street was the city's front on the east 
side — along it was extended the shipping of the 
port, as the North River with its width and direct 
continuation of the bay was thought to afford 
only an unsafe and hazardous anchorage. Along 
the shore, from the Battery to Peck Slip, the ships 
lay at the wharves, or at anchor in the river, and 

[137] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

above were the shipyards — then scenes of busy 
industry. Here and there were receiving docks, 
as at Coenties Slip, Wall Street, and Maiden 
Lane, which were aftei'ward filled up to make the 
broad spaces which are now found at the foot 
of those streets. The Fly Market, so called, a 
corruption from V'lei or Valley, from a stream 
which ran through Maiden Lane, the favorite 
location for the laundry work of our mothers, 
consisted of three market houses on that street 
extending from Pearl Street to the river, and 
from the slip connected with it a ferry ran to 
Brooklyn. 

Before passing to the consideration of the gen- 
eral condition of the city at that time, our en- 
graver deserves a moment's attention. " Engrav- 
ing," says General James Grant Wilson in his 
" Memorial History of the City of New York " 
(Vol. IV, p. 357) , " did not antedate sculpture in 
its artistic and technical development, although a 
number of engravers, most of them foreigners, 
began to practise their calling in this city in the 
last decade of the Eighteenth Century," and 
among the names he mentions as prominent in 
the art at that time is that of William Rollinson, 
by whom the engraving before us was made. The 
artist who prepared the drawing, John Wood, 
has not handed down his fame to posterity in any 

f 138] 



NEW YORK IN 1801 

other work than this, so far as I can ascertain. 
The plate is most accurately and artistically en- 
graved, and will bear the closest examination 
under the most powerful glasses. 

The city of our homes and our love arose from 
the destruction of the Revolutionary period like 
a phenix from its ashes. With her population 
scattered, her commerce destroyed, most of her 
buildings burned, ruin and desolation on every 
hand, she went to work with undaunted courage, 
unrivaled energy, and far-seeing sagacity, imme- 
diately upon the withdrawal of the British troops 
in 1783, to rebuild the Metropolis of the West. 
The fact that she became the seat of the new gov- 
ernment was unquestionably a strong factor in 
her favor, and in 1801 she had already acquired a 
population of between fifty and sixty thousand. 
An estimate of the funds required for the sup- 
port of the city's institutions for the year 1800, 
which has been presei'ved by General Wilson, 
gives us a good idea of the responsibilities the city 
authorities of those days had to bear, and forms a 
marvelous contrast to the budget of the present 
city. For the almshouse the sum of thirty thou- 
sand dollars was needed, an amount which seems 
disproportionately large, and which may have 
been in some degree attributable to the losses in- 
curred in the Revolution by those who were too old 

[ 139] 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

or too helpless to restore their fortunes. For the 
bridewell, or workhouse, five thousand dollars was 
required, and for the support of the prisoners 
three thousand dollars was appropriated. In 
view of the cost of our present police system, the 
maintenance of the watch for twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars seems idyllic, as does an appropria- 
tion of five thousand dollars for streets. To this 
last must be added other items which seem prop- 
erly to belong to the same subject, such as lamps 
to cost fifteen thousand dollars for being kept in 
order and lighted on nights when there was no 
" light moon," and wells and pumps, for fire and 
domestic purposes, for which twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars were needed. The Manhattan Com- 
pany, which had been chartered the year before, 
had already gone into the banking business under 
its charter, but had done veiy little in the line of 
its ostensible purpose of supplying the city with 
pure water. For roads about the city seventy- 
five hundred dollars were appropriated. But 
even in those days, which so many people who 
know little about them consider purer and better 
than these so far as politics and politicians are 
concerned, our predecessors showed their appre- 
ciation of the advantages to be derived from the 
useful application of money by making appro- 
priations for " contingencies " of twenty-nine 

[ 140 1 



NEW YORK IN 1801 

thousand four hundred and fifty dollars, and for 
" city contingencies " of seventy-five hundred 
dollars, moneys doubtless intended to be applied 
where they would do the most good, as the con- 
tingencies might arise. 

The city then occupied only the lower end of 
the island. The Battery was the favorite prome- 
nade. JNIany of the prominent merchants lived 
along State Street, and in Pearl Street, over their 
stores. The banks and financial institutions \^'ere 
in Wall Street, where also resided many of our 
ancestors, and their wives went shopping in Wil- 
liam Street. 

The only theater was the one on Park Row, 
between Ann and Beekman streets, called the 
Park Theater, which M^as opened in 1798, and 
there appear to have been no other public amuse- 
ments. There was much social life, but consid- 
ering the proportion of the number of churches 
to the population, these must have afforded the 
principal opportunities for social gatherings. 
I have enumerated those conspicuous by their 
steeples, but there were many others, such as the 
Garden Street (or Exchange Place) Church, 
Grace Church on the corner of Rector Street and 
Broadway, where the Empire Building now tow- 
ers, the French Church in Pine Street, Christ 
Church in Ann Street, and St. Peter's in Bar- 

[ 141 1 



VIEWS OF EARLY NEW YORK 

clay Street, built in 1786, the home of the oldest 
Roman Catholic congregation in the city. 

I can find no words to conclude this brief sketch 
better or more appropriate than those used by the 
President of the United States in his " New 
York," pp. 166, 167. Says Mr. Roosevelt, speak- 
ing of this period very characteristically: " The 
divisions between the upper, lower, and middle 
classes were sharply marked. The old families 
formed a rather exclusive circle, and among the 
large land-owners still claimed the lead, though 
the rich merchants, who were of similar ancestry, 
much outnumbered them, and stood practically on 
the same plane. But the days of this social and 
political aristocracy were numbered. They lost 
their political power first. . . . The fall of this 
class, as a class, was not to be regretted, for its 
individual members did not share the general fate, 
unless they themselves desei*ved to fall. The 
descendant of any old family who was worth his 
salt still had as fair a chance as any one else to 
make his way in the world of politics, of business, 
or of literature; and, according to our code and 
standard, the man who asks more is a craven." 



[142J 

X52 ■ m 



\> o " /,, -^ 






^- ^. 






\0 c , 



•A * 8 I ^ " V 






^V 






?:^' ^^. 






J"; 






/- ^ 

vO C 









: <i^ 



V ''■■> 



'' .0 



^0 0^ 



i>^' 



0- , i 



■r^ ^^ •^. ^^™ 



';f-^ 



o^' '^- 



^■^' 



■■'■ 'V 












%, v^' 






o 



^^^ 






.-^v 






.x-?-' 



V^r^fT^V 









A 



*'■ 



Deacidifled using the Bookkeepsr process. 
Neutralizing Agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: 

MAY 






IIiBbbkkeeper 



PflESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES. LP. 
1 \ 1 Thomson Park Drivo 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



-<^. .^ 






^-^^^ >^ 






,^> ■", 



-sS''" 









;x*\' 



.-b^ %, 



^^. ,<v 






,0 s 



.-^ 



-;/■ aV 



^/. v!^ 



^c- 






.^^^^ '^. 






.\^^ 









, "^- , 'X' 






3^ A» 



,^^ -n*-. 



\^^-<. 



